Mind and its Place in the World: Non-Reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness 9783110325683, 3937202986, 9783110325058

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Alexander Batthyany / Avshalom Elitzur (Eds.) Mind and its Place in the World Non-Reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness

PHENOMENOLOGY & MIND Herausgegeben von / Edited by Arkadiusz Chrudzimski • Wolfgang Huemer Band 7 / Volume 7

Alexander Batthyany / Avshalom Elitzur (Eds.)

Mind and its Place in the World Non-Reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness

ontos verlag Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

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2006 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm nr Frankfurt www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-98-6

2006

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper ISO-Norm 970-6 This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag

Table of Contents Mind and Its Place in the World: Introduction and Overview Alexander Batthyany

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What’s the Mind–Body With You Anyway? Prolegomena to any Scientific Discussion of Consciousness Avshalom Elitzur

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Thinkways: The Impulse to Reductionism Hoyt Edge

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Self-Appropriation: The Dynamic Structure of Human Consciousness Donald P. Merrifield, S.J.

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One Man’s Meat is another Man’s Person Peter J. King

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Consciousness and the Intentional Awareness of Instantiables Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan

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Mental Monism Considered as a Solution to the Mind-Body problem Peter B. Lloyd

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Telepathy: Or, How do I Know that this Thought is Mine? Fiona Steinkamp

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The Dimensions of Conscious Experience: A Quantitative Phenomenology Steven Lehar

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A Radical Externalist Approach to Consciousness: The Enlarged Mind Riccardo Manzotti

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On Explanation, Interpretation, and Natural Science with Reference to Freud, Ricoeur, and Von Wright Paul Løvland

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Personal Identity, the Self and Time Howard Robinson

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Quantum Monism: Spinozicism Revived? Gershon Kurizki

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Boundary Conditions for Theories of Consciousness: The Near-Death Experience and the Failure of Materialism J. Kenneth Arnette

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Contributors and Editors

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Mind and Its Place in the World: Introduction and Overview Alexander Batthyany

1 About this Book This volume consists of twelve articles and essays on the problem of consciousness. In its approach, our anthology follows the non-reductionist path typified by Karl Popper’s and John C. Eccles’ The Self and Its Brain (1977, Springer International), and more recently by John R. Smythies und John Beloff’s edited collection, The Case for Dualism (1989, University of Virginia Press). While these volumes were pioneering in their time for their criticisms of reductionism, we felt that the non-reductionist tradition was again in need of renewal. Like the preceding works, the present volume distinguishes itself from the vast literature in consciousness studies by bringing together non-physicalistic, non-reductionist theories of consciousness, and by pointing out new sources and unexamined paths of research. The volume brings the non-reductionist tradition up to date, providing analysis and perspectives on the most recent trends in consciousness research. On the other hand, whereas those two books exclusively argued for a dualist model of consciousness and its relation to the brain, the papers and articles gathered in this volume present several varieties of non-reductionism. The title of this book – Mind and Its Place in the World: Non-reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness – is instructive. It was not our aim to present a new ontology of consciousness; rather, we wanted to re-open a debate which we believe was closed too early. In other words, the chapters in this book are not intended to represent any sort of concerted defense of a specific non-reductionist ontology of consciousness. We did not want to predetermine the outcome of the discourse by favouring a certain philosophical position, but intended to provide a forum in which many opinions and approaches could gain a fair hearing and in which researchers could discuss the promises, pitfalls, and explanatory strengths and weaknesses of non-reduc-

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tionist ontologies of consciousness. Against this background, instead of restricting our authors to specific topics and methodologies, we invited them to provide a paper on whatever topic they deemed representative, important and conducive to a broadened and ontologically more flexible understanding of consciousness and the mind. Collectively, the papers in this volume draw a map of the philosophical questions and positions of our current understanding of consciousness and its place in nature. Most of our authors follow Chalmers’ suggestion to divide the problem of consciousness into two categories, which he marks as the “easy problems” and the “hard problem”. The first category yields to conventional scientific methods and is usually researched in the context of psychology, the neurosciences and cognitive science. The hard problem fundamentally differs from the easy problems to the same extent as content differs from quality. Here the question is not about what we experience and by which information processes we navigate through the world, but more fundamentally: why and how it is that we do have subjective experiences and inner awareness at all? The papers of this volume carefully discuss the basic positions which so far have been proposed in order to tackle the hard problem and find their explanatory value wanting. Having isolated subjectivity as the core problem, most of our authors have a lot to say about explanations of the latter. For as soon as we accept that there really is a problem of consciousness, and one which is not addressed by mere reductionism, we have to turn to the metaphysical question: How does consciousness relate to the physical world? Our authors share the belief that within the framework of reductive physicalism all attempts to answer this question must founder. Either we adhere to reductive physicalism and thus sacrifice consciousness at the very outset, or we adhere to “non-reductive physicalism” which may do more justice to consciousness, but on the other hand systematically abuses the notion of physicalism. But obviously, there are unique features of consciousness, and to subtly smuggle them into the physical realm means to do injustice to both the mental and the physical. Collectively, the resulting chapters touch on several critical themes that we believe will be useful in stimulating discussion and future research in nonreductionist consciousness studies. As noted earlier, the rationale underlying our selection was neither concerted nor was it topically restricted. As a consequence, the chapter cut across traditional fields of disciplines (e.g. physics,

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epistemology, ontology, history of ideas, etc.). Also, in view of the fact that the only common denominator of the papers in this volume is a broadly defined non-reductionist stance, but no specific common ontological position on consciousness and the mind, grouping them by ontological position did not seem suitable for our purposes. Rather, we organized the book by the main focus of the respective papers, moving consecutively from general discussion of the scope and limits of reductionist and non-reductionist methodologies to special topics of non-reductive theories. The following paragraphs offer an introduction to some of the material and a brief overview of the general format.

2 Chapter overview In the opening chapter, Hoyt Edge looks at the way how we explain consciousness rather than offering a detailed discussion of the merits of reductionism or non-reductionism. Edge proposes that there is a peculiarly Euro-American impulse to reductionism which led to many an explanatory success in our understanding of otherwise mystifying phenomena of the natural world. However, according to Edge, this very same approach must founder when it comes to subjectivity and consciousness. Hence, keeping with the general program of this volume, Edge’s discussion implicitly assumes a nonreductionist stance as an adequate approach to consciousness and the mind, but at the same time goes a step back in order to try to understand what might have gone wrong in our investigation of consciousness. According to Edge, reductionism is a useful heuristic, but like all heuristics, it has its pitfalls. Yet once a heuristic becomes the default method of investigation, we are doomed – simply because all cases where the heuristic is inapplicable must remain beyond explanatory reach. Edge argues that the only way to overcome the overwhelming influence of our impulse to reductionism is to make it explicit, and to recognize it for what it is, and then compensate for it. The second paper illustrates an alternative to what Edge describes as our impulse to reductionism. Donald P. Merrifield’s personal essay reflects on scientific, philosophical and theological approaches to consciousness and its place in the world. Merrifield offers a phenomenological description and reflection of the (his) self in the natural world. His first-person approach is a useful model of an alternative to reductionist methodologies as it proposes

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that common-sense and the scientific method form a continuum. Merrifield draws on Lonergan’s study of human consciousness and its dynamic structure (self-appropriation). Lonergan’s model is inclusive enough to transcend the classical dichotomy of reductionism and non-reductionism since it proposes a more liberal approach to what we find in us and the world and how we try to explain it. In the same vain, Merrifield argues for a deepened understanding of the interconnectedness of consciousness, mental content and selfhood. The next three papers offer ontological perspectives in the narrower sense. Keeping with our objective to present a wide variety of non-reductionist approaches to consciousness and the mind, these papers present diverse arguments on what consciousness is and how to understand its relation to the physical world. The closest we get to a systematic defence of classical dualism are the papers by Peter J. King and by Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan, the former arguing for a refined version of Cartesian substance dualism and the latter arguing for what seems to boil down to a particularly strong version of property dualism. Peter J. King, after discussing some of the traditional objections to substance dualism, sees as one of the main reasons for the dismissal of substance dualism the misconstrued idea that dualism is unscientific. King makes a rather bold assertion – he suggests an empirical experiment that would stand as a genuine empirical test of substance dualism. Unfortunately, the likelihood that such an experiment will be carried out is low, since it would entail having a volunteer undergoing a major surgery (a brain transplantion). Still, even if it is not likely that such an experiment will be carried out anywhere in the near future, King argues that the results would favour a dualist account of the conscious mind (and more generally, personhood). In their joint paper, Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan, develop a number of arguments for property dualism. Pannier and Sullivan distinguish between two versions of property dualism: strong and weak. They argue that while substance dualism does entail property dualism, property dualism (weak or strong) does not necessarily entail substance dualism. Pannier and Sullivan, in their ensuing discussion, describe an intermediate position between dualism and monism: having shown that mental properties exist and are sufficiently different from physical properties as to deserve to be regarded as a category of their own, they argue for a re-unification of mind and matter. To which extend then is this model non-reductionist? Pannier and Sullivan re-

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fer to the Aristotelian tradition which characterizes some entities as forms, i.e. as causally active immaterial sources of both mental and physical energy which serve to unify matter in a structurally organized way. Thus the “body” is not in itself an individual substance; rather, there is only one substance – the embodied form. Being immaterial, an Aristotelian unifying form is, a fortiori, not totally physical. Hence physicalist reductionism is ruled out on this account, but so is traditional substance dualism. Yet another non-physicalist alternative in our understanding of consciousness is idealist monism. Peter B. Lloyd argues that the classical formulation of the hard problem – why is there consciousness at all? – is badly misconstrued. Rather, the real question is: why is there matter at all? Interestingly enough, once one gives in to this question, things fall neatly into place and consciousness no longer appears as enigmatic as it does if one tries to reconcile it with our current understanding of the physical world. Unfortunately, however, we exchange one hard problem with the next. For if we take consciousness for granted, matter (and more generally, non-sentience) becomes increasingly difficult to understand. Lloyd employs a comparative analysis of mental and material terms and shows that while the former are directly given, the latter are inferred, notional, constructed. On this basis, Lloyd offers a detailed discussion of the idealist monist ontology of consciousness. Having tested the grounds for differing basic ontologies of the mind, the next wave of papers looks at content rather than mere experience and its ontological underpinnings. Fiona Steinkamp takes as her problem the question: How do I know that this thought is mine? Steinkamp discusses this question in the context of both normal communication and telepathy, the apparent exchange of information without the use of any of the known senses. Having a thought is a private event which in a very concrete sense happens within us – yet thought content, no matter whether telepathic in origin or generated through more conventional means, relates in one way or the other to an outer, public world. Hence the question of the origin and ownership of thought closely reflects the hard problem – and at the same time transcends it. Indeed, Steinkamp’s paper shows that Chalmers’ distinction between easy and hard problems, nowadays widely adopted by the contemporary philosophy of mind, might not be as compelling as it appears at a first glance. Steven Lehar carries further some of the points that Steinkamp raises. In particular his paper offers a thorough critique of naïve realism. Furthermore,

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Lehar argues for a careful re-evaluation of the merits and pitfalls of introspection and argues for a quantitative and more inclusive phenomenology of the dimensions of conscious experience. As in Steinkamp’s paper, the boundaries between easy and hard problems once again turn out to be artificial and not overly conducive to a clearer understanding of man’s mental life: Lehar argues that mental events, i.e. the data of our phenomenology of consciousness, are inconsistent with physicalist reductionism. Only when we appreciate consciousness and its manifestations in their full range and richness, says Lehar, can we come to a proper understanding of consciousness and its relationship to the natural world. Riccardo Manzotti proposes a radically new approach to the relationship of subjects and objects, one which is based not on a static understanding of the world (and its experiencers), but rather on the process of relating. Based on this process-oriented ontology, Manzotti argues that as soon as we conceive the world as made of processes extended in time and space, conscious experience becomes reframed as an extended collection of processes comprehending all those events that are part of our conscious experience. It is a radical proposal (and Manzotti calls it as such), but once you give in to its few basic premises, the problem of consciousness becomes considerably easier to address within a non-reductionist framework. In fact, the whole idea of reductionism and non-reductionism looses much of its force once we come to the understanding that the world consists not of things, but of events. In his paper, Paul Løvland, discusses the explanatory methodology of the natural sciences and their applicability to our philosophical and psychological understanding of actions. Løvland draws on the analogy of human action and other processes in nature, offering a very rigorous methodology which takes seriously both basic sets of data: our subjective experience of wanting, willing, wishing and intending, and the known mechanisms and laws governing force, energy and events. After the papers concerned with mental content and action, Howard Robinson’s paper takes the issue a step further and addresses the entity whose events mental events are, namely, the self. Robinson sees the self as simple and immaterial substance (i.e. a Cartesian ego) and defends this view by taking a critical look at Parfit’s radical reductionism. Robinson presents a number of arguments which are based on the self’s identity in time. According to Robinson, even soft physicalism or property dualism cannot do justice to

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selfhood; hence substance dualism emerges as the only coherent alternative ontological model of the self and its persistence in time. The last two papers of this volume address the problem of consciousness and its relation to the physical world by approaching it from two very different perspectives and with somewhat differing results: Gershon Kurizki presents his model of Monistic Quantum Spinozicism, a decidedly non-reductionist (and non-dualistic) description of the physical world which is able to accommodate consciousness without reducing it. Kenneth Arnette on the other hand offers a dualistic account of consciousness which is primarily based on his argument of the boundary conditions of materialist monism: Arnette argues that consciousness is intractable by the tools of a reductionist approach, precisely because the latter ignores a number of phenomena which are not yet (and, according to Arnette and a number of prominent researcher in the evolving field of near-death-studies, never will be) within the grasp of physicalism. In other words, Arnette argues that physicalism is self-evident and self-supporting only insofar as it continues to discard those data which may be considered to be its strongest counterarguments. Arnette then analyses data from near-death experiences – just one example of a class of phenomena which, according to Arnette, show that physicalism cannot do justice to our mental lives. Where are we left after having gone through these twelve contributions? It seems as if the non-reductionist tradition within consciousness research is as diverse as its physicalist-reductionist counterpart. But it is not as loud. We hope that with this volume, we have helped some of the alternative accounts of consciousness gain a fair hearing and hopefully also encouraged others to follow an explanatory path less travelled – a path which in the end may turn out to be right approach after all. In the following part of the introduction, Avshalom Elitzur draws a map of the philosophical questions and positions of contemporary consciousness studies.

What’s the Mind-Body Problem With You Anyway? Prolegomena to any Scientific Discussion of Consciousness Avshalom Elitzur

If something strange and unexplained persists, would its mere persistence make it natural? That would be the case for the layperson, but the scientist and philosopher should know better. Commonness should never allow us to get used to the miraculous. Such is the phenomenon known as “consciousness,” “subjective experience” or “qualia,” accompanying every moment of our waking mental life. Attempts to explain this ingredient of mind with what science has found out about the brain have so far failed, leading to the famous “mind-body problem.” But, as the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. The persistence of this phenomenon often makes us forget how peculiar it is. All too often, stating the problem well is half way to the solution, and all too often, the mind-body problem is wrongly stated. Chalmers (1996), with typical acumen and grace, has shown that, when an author purports to “solve” the mind-body problem, it very often turns out that he or she did not understand what the problem was in the first place. So let us introduce the problem first, in a way that will also provide a sufficient basis for the argument to come. In view of my lamented lack of dialogue partners, I will invoke a naïve discussant* whose questions will help us to focus on the crucial issues. So what’s the mind-body problem with you anyway? Why can’t you accept the claim that science gives a satisfactory explanation of consciousness?

*

In reality, however, it was a real person, Moran Cerf, to whom I am indebted for many stimulating dialogues.

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When dealing with consciousness, science has miserably failed in what has always been its criterion of success. I refer to the way science reduces all qualities to quantities. Lord Rutherford once said: The qualitative is nothing but poor quantitative. Consider the following examples: i) red is different from blue, ii) sweet is different from salty, and iii) love is different from hate. These examples seem to involve clear qualitative differences, but the scientific account neatly converts all such qualities to numerical values on the same scale. i) Both red and blue light are electromagnetic waves, differing only in their wavelengths: 700 nm for red and 400 nm for blue. Consequently, different cones in our retina react differently to these wavelengths because the amino acid sequences of their opsin molecules (a component of rhodopsin, the visual pigment that absorbs photons) differs. ii) A sugar molecule, C6H12O6, contains six carbon atoms, twelve hydrogen atoms and six oxygen atoms, while a salt molecule, NaCl, contains one sodium atom and one chlorine atom. As different as these atoms seem to be from one another, they all contain identical protons and electrons, only in varying numbers and in different arrangements on the atom shells, e.g., one proton in the hydrogen atom’s nucleus and one electron in its single shell, eleven protons in the sodium atom’s nucleus and eleven electrons in its two shells. Consequently, salt and sugar molecules exchange different numbers of electrons with the molecules in our tongue receptors. iii) Love and hate are extremely opposite emotions, but both involve very similar neurons in the brain that differ mainly in their location and spatial arrangement (location, described by geometry, is also a quantitative measure). In all these examples, a marked qualitative difference turns out to be merely quantitative. Thanks! I’ll think about it next time I eat ice cream or hate someone. So why aren’t you satisfied with these explanations?

These explanations superbly account for the different reactions elicited by red and blue light or by salt and sugar molecules. They also neatly explain why people act so differently when they love or hate. But notice what it is that these explanations have completely left out: things that cannot be reduced to quantities. These are the pure qualities, or, to use the beautiful modern expression: qualia.

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What’s that?

Qualia (“quale” in the singular) are ingredients of our perceptions that cannot be communicated. Strangely, when we perceive something, we can very efficiently communicate its quantitative properties, but its quale is entirely left out. Here is an example. When you and I look at a red rose and I assure you that I, like you, see a red rose, you still cannot rule out the possibility that I perceive that color as blue. True, in all possible languages, I would refer to all colors with the same terms that you would (assuming that our color vision and linguistic abilities are normal, which can be easily verified). But this only means that both of us have correctly learned to associate the words “red,” “rot,” “adom,” “ahmar,” etc., to electromagnetic radiation of 700 nm wavelength, and “blue,” “blauen,” “kahol” and “azrak” to 400 nm. Nothing of these can tell you anything about my inner experience. This is known in the philosophical literature as “the problem of inverted qualia.” So, it’s a problem of communication…

Much worse, qualia elude not only words, but observation and experimentation too. Suppose that, with appropriate technology, you obtain the fullest real time description of what goes on in my brain when I perceive the red rose – every neuron, axon, dendrite and synapse, every neurotransmitter molecule. You know better than me what goes on in my brain when I perceive red, and still, that does not bring you any closer to my qualia! Already today, science can give a very detailed account of the mechanism that leads from the retinal response initiated by light, through the thalamus and various other subcortical centers, to the occipital cortex and then to the Broca and Vernicke centers that are responsible for uttering the name of the perceived color. So you can know everything you want to know about what goes on in my brain when I see red. Yet nothing in these processes can guarantee that my quale of seeing a certain color is the one you assume. Worse still, it is not only that you cannot be sure that my qualia are similar to yours – you cannot even be sure that I have any qualia at all. With today’s technology, a machine is perfectly conceivable that will name colors, in any language, with even greater accuracy than humans. Does that machine have the qualia of “red” or “blue”? Some people would firmly argue that, once the machine is complex enough so as to have memory, information-

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processing capabilities and the other advanced faculties that humans have, that machine will have conscious experiences. But, reasonable as it may sound, this is only a hypothesis. Nothing, but nothing, in all of what we know justifies believing that if a physical system responds correctly to some stimuli, it must have any qualia accompanying these stimuli. Returning to humans, the problem becomes even more grotesque. I have no doubt that you, apart from appropriately responding to various colors, sounds, tastes and odors, also have the accompanying qualia. And yet, annoyingly, this very reasonable belief has never found a rigorous proof. But isn’t there a law that obliges qualia to be present in the brain?

No, and, moreover, such a law is ruled out by basic physical laws. Once you assume that the brain operates by physical laws, qualia have no place in this operation. Here is why. Consider first the movements of billiard balls. Do you need to assume any quale in order to explain their movements? Do you need to hypothesize that the balls “feel repulsion” when they hit one another or that they “yearn” to come to rest when friction occurs? No qualia are needed to account for their behavior, which is strictly and solely governed by the laws of mechanics. Neither do any qualia stem from this behavior. Next consider a plant in the pot that has not been watered for a few days, nearly dying. You water it, and soon its leaves stretch again and regain their vitality. Do you need the qualia of “being thirsty” or “slaking thirst” to explain what happened? The laws of osmosis (different concentrations of salt on the two sides of the plant cell’s semi-permeable membrane) perfectly suffice. You can guess where I am heading. High up the scale of complexity is human behavior. That, too, is supposed to be governed by neuronal processes that are, in essence, physical processes. If you add anything that is distinct from these processes, say, the quale of red, to account for any physical manifestation of liking red roses, such as giving a rose to a loved person, you end up assuming that the laws of physics do not sufficiently account for a physical process such as giving a rose. It is just as if you assumed that some quale has taken part in the movements of a billiard ball. That would break the closure of the physical world, implying that there is something other than mechanical laws that govern motion.

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But human behavior is so complex…

Do not make the common error of relating consciousness to complexity. The UN administration is by definition much more complex than each of its single officers, yet there seems to be no reason to ascribe qualia to the UN as a whole. And if you believe, as I do (though we have no proof for that) that even mice have qualia of pain and pleasure, complexity does not seem to account for the mystery of consciousness. Complexity, then, seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. It does not seem to solve the mystery. The situation brings to mind G.B. Shaw’s remark: “If you are not a communist at 20, you have no heart; if you are still a communist at 30, you have no head.” A similar choice awaits any one who tries to have a consistent view concerning the relations between consciousness and physical processes: Should you be silly or inhumane? On the one hand, if you grant consciousness to, say, mice – believing that they have the quale of fear, you may also ascribe the quale of “fear of light” to a photophobic response of green algae, supposed to be accounted for by the automatic responses of its flagella*, or the quale of “fear of water” to a hydrophobic detergent molecule, supposed to be governed by electrical forces alone. On the other hand, if you deny the quale of fear to mice you may as well deny the quale of “fear of tigers” to a terrified human running for his or her life from a tiger… But you keep talking about “physics” as if present-day physics is the final word. Why can’t you imagine that future physics will reveal new phenomena, say, some unknown properties of matter or energy, which will account for these qualia?

Again, this is not a problem that can be solved by additional information. Many good scientists believe they can explain qualia by some novel physics, and then fall into the same trap time and again. So let me show you why you don’t have to be an expert scientist in order to realize, with the aid of a simple thought experiment, that no physical concept, whether known today or still to be found in the future, can account for qualia. Imagine attending a *

Facilitated – how inventive is evolution! – by rhodopsin, the same pigments facilitating color vision in our eyes.

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lecture by a world-renowned neurophysiologist who announces that she has discovered a new neurotransmitter, say, alpha-mindo-encephaline, that accounts for qualia. Then a very detailed explanation follows, showing the enormously complex pattern of interactions of that neurotransmitter with specific neurons and synapses. Naturally, if you have not specialized in neurochemistry and neuroanatomy, no chance you will understand what she is talking about. Or imagine that the lecturer is a distinguished physicist who has discovered a new property of elementary particles. You know that particle physics ascribes to particles some fundamental properties other than mass and charge, to which they give fancy names such as “color,” “beauty,” “charm,” etc. So this physicist has discovered a new property, “loveliness,” and this property, which characterizes also the particles within our brains, is supposed to account for the qualia we experience. Here too a frightfully technical mathematics follows the distinguished physicist’s announcement, explaining what “loveliness” is and how it gives rise to qualia. And here too, unless you are a competent particle physicist, you will understand nothing. But if you look around you in the audience, you will see senior scientists nodding their heads seriously, perhaps making a few technical objections but saying, “Well, it’s interesting. Let’s think about it.” Don’t bother! You don’t have to understand anything of the details of these alleged explanations in order to assess their value. Just ask, a-priori: Can any such property of matter assure me, in principle, that my quale of red is not my fellow human’s quale of blue? Worse, can any such explanation enable me to prove that my fellow human has qualia at all? Can alpha-mindoencephaline or loveliness rule out zombies? You see, this is not a question of more knowledge. Qualia lie, in principle, out of any possible physical account. But perhaps we can ignore qualia altogether?

Well, let’s see how long you can ignore them. Think about sleepwalking. Ridgway (1996) discusses cases in which people committed murder while allegedly asleep, and whether they can be accounted guilty for what they did. What concerns us here is that murder is a complex act requiring fairly advanced cognitive faculties. (Wilkes [1984] refers to a less substantiated case of a somnambulist physician who performed a medical examination

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and even made a correct diagnosis while asleep). And yet, the person is totally unaware of his or her own actions. Now, in principle there is no reason why this state cannot be extended to all mental functions. One might, in other words, laugh, cry and sing while totally unconscious. So here is a thought experiment for you. How about turning your consciousness off so that all your actions will be just the same – no one would ever notice any difference – but your consciousness would be silenced forever. The scientist that wants to conduct this experiment on you proposes to give you $10,000 as a reward. Would you agree? But it is doubtful whether such an operation is at all possible…

Never mind technicalities! In theoretical physics and philosophy, a gedankenexperiment (thought-experiment) is an indispensable tool in that it enables you to anticipate technology by many years. Once it was shown that a child can walk and go to sleep in his or her parents’ bed while asleep, it is only a technical matter whether you can be asleep now while talking to me. So, again, would you agree to turn off only your consciousness, leaving your observed behavior intact, for a nice sum? Well, others won’t see any difference but for myself – in fact, only for myself – it would be nothing short of death.

Right. And this is what makes qualia so peculiar. They accompany any moment of our waking life; in fact they are the most important ingredients of it, and yet, they have no place even in the fullest and most detailed scientific explanation of our brain’s work and our resulting behavior. So, will consciousness always remain forever beyond science’s reach?

In 1872, a staunch reductionist, the well-known physiologist and physicist Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) delivered a famous speech in Leipzig, "Über die Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis" [On the limitations of knowledge in the natural sciences]. He maintained that certain problems were unsolvable, among them the natures of matter and force or the origin of motion. He concluded the lecture with the then oft-quoted agnostic

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catchwords “Ignoramus et ignorabimus” [We are ignorant and we shall (always) be ignorant]. To “ignoramus” we must concede. Should we also concede to “ignorabimus”? I am afraid that as long as reductionism, which I personally like very much, remains the only scientific method, that will indeed be the case. But then, reductionism is probably wrong (Elitzur 2006).

References Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elitzur, A. C. (2006). Consciousness Makes a Difference. In Batthyany, A., Elitzur, A. C. (in press) Ridgway, P. (1996). Sleepwalking: Insanity or Automatism?, E-Law: Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law, 3, No.1 Wilkes, K. (1984). Is Consciousness Important? British Journal for Philosophy of Science, 35, 223-243

Thinkways: The Impulse to Reductionism Hoyt Edge

1 Introduction This paper does not engage in a traditional analysis of the “problem of consciousness,” arguing, for instance whether consciousness can be reduced to material processes, or even whether functionalism is adequate. Rather than discussing the details of this important issue, I want to concentrate on the broad strokes, to paint with a Jackson Pollack approach rather than the detailed approach of Bruegel. As opposed to detailing why consciousness cannot be reduced, I want to step back and ask a more basic question: Why are we so concerned to ask whether reductionism is adequate or inadequate? More to the point, why do scientists and philosophers of science so naturally think that reductionism is an appropriate methodology? I want to discuss what assumptions are involved in this desire for a reduction of consciousness, focusing on historical factors that led us to this point in our thinking. Is this a peculiarly Euro-American way of approaching consciousness, a cultural icon? More directly, I want to ask why the EuroAmerican cultures have an impulse to reductionism. I am not suggesting that the traditional discussions of the problem of consciousness, and of the adequacy of the reduction of consciousness, are not appropriate. The EuroAmerican world contains a dominant Weltanschauung that has developed over the past 400 years, due to historical, scientific, political, social, and economic influences, and that includes the impulse towards reductionism. Because it is a paradigm that has been successful in numerous ways, reductionism seems natural to us, and so we are driven to examine

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whether reductionism is appropriate in individual cases. These arguments are obviously central to philosophy and to science. However, to ask about the impulse to reductionism is a different question from asking about the adequacy of reductionism as an approach in specific contexts. I assume that reductionism is a useful and powerful strategy that should be used in certain situations. Nevertheless, I want to ask why the West is driven to want to use it almost exclusively as a strategy. To support reductionism by referring to Occam’s Razor is not sufficient; that heuristic says only that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity. To assume that reductionism follows from it begs the most fundamental question—what entities and processes are necessity? For instance, is a unreduced consciousness necessary for our understanding of persons? More to the point, why does Occam’s Razor have such divinity in our credo in the first place? The question is not whether Occam’s Razor is a reasonable heuristic, one among others. Surely it is. The question is why we have such a drive to employ it so impulsively and in its narrowest construal. What I want to do in this paper is to lay the groundwork for others to be able to argue persuasively that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes. I believe that such arguments are presently difficult to make and are not readily accepted because we have a cultural bias in our thinking. It is this cultural bias that I want to probe.

2 Thinkways One way to approach the question of whether there is such a bias is to ask, using Kuhnian language (Kuhn 1966), whether the problem of consciousness is simply a puzzle to be solved within our present understandings and commitments, or whether it calls for a more radical solution, something more analogous to a paradigm shift in our thinking, a more basic way of dealing with it. I think we should take the latter approach, and this paper presents an argument for this conclusion. However, as opposed to Kuhn, who was interested purely in science and the philosophy of science, I want to deal with this issue in a broader cultural context.

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I will use the strategy of stepping back from the usual and more specific approaches to the problems of consciousness by introducing a new term into the discussion, one which suggests that we ought to think about how we think. The term that I propose is “thinkways.” I suggest this term, which is meant to serve similar functions as the term, “selfways,” introduced by Markus, Mullally and Kitayama (1997), a term they created to point out that although there are alternative ways to think about and live through concepts of self, a culture adopts one of these as dominant. In turn, this particular concept of the self is subtly introduced and reproduced in culture, rather than being intentionally, publicly, and consciously proposed and adopted. They point out that cultural systems have a profound influence on individuals by socializing them in terms behavior, of how they function in the world. The biological entity becomes a fully functioning social creature through this process. Sometimes this influence is specific to the individual, given her unique circumstances, but the more interesting case results when the influence affects the entire culture in a dynamic, collective process. In this case, all, or most, individuals are socialized into patterns of behavior and thinking; through this process, individuals embody broader cultural norms that can be viewed as characterizing that culture. In their article, they are specifically interested in the ways that individuals come to think about themselves, and hence they use the term, “selfways.” These are the ways that individuals are socialized into thinking about themselves (and others) as selves and how these selves should function in society. I do not want to speak directly to the argument of the article, that there is a fundamental difference between individualist EuroAmerican and more relational non-EuroAmerican selfways. I heartily agree with their conclusions, and I will make some of the same points found in their research, although I will approach them from my own perspective, and I will focus on reductionism, the point of the present article. However, for us to get a better handle on their term, and, in turn, to see how I use the term, thinkways, let us look more closely at their argument. They define selfways as “culturally constructed patterns, including ways of thinking, feeling, wanting, and doing, [that] arise from living one’s

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life in particular sociocultural contexts—that is, contexts structured according to certain meanings, practices, and institutions and not others. Selfways include key cultural ideas and values, including understandings of what a person is, as well as senses of how to be a “good,” “appropriate”, or “moral” person” (p. 16). In particular, Markus, et al., argue that these selfways are enculturated and reproduced through practices, actions that are repeated in the culture and carry normative expectations that go beyond the simple performance of the particular action. For instance, the practice of Americans giving their young children their own bedrooms both implies the values of independence and individualism, as well as reproduces these values within the culture. Seldom is this practice analysed to see what values it carries within it, and seldom are these values made explicit. Rather, the practice becomes normative, and with the practice comes the enculturation of these values and views of self as independent and individual.* In an analogous fashion to Markus’ use of the term “selfways,” I propose to introduce the term, “thinkways”. Just as there are particular ways of self-functioning that are mediated by the culture through institutions and practices, so I want to argue that there are particular ways of thinking that become the norm in a culture in such a way that specific cognitive strategies becomes reified as the way to think; employing these strategies become so prevalent that they become the norm, reinforced both by a system of related concepts, as well as by practices within the society analogous to Americans giving each child a separate bedroom Just as Markus, et al., argued that the practices of a selfway, such as the ideal of an independent self in EuroAmerican (and especially American) cul*

I do not have to point out the irony involved here, that even individualist societies are based on a relational system; at their fundamental level, even individualist selfways are grafted on the trunk of a systems view. Perhaps this is what Plato had in mind when Socrates argued in the Crito (Plato 1975) for a intimate view of the relationship between the individual and the society. Although it is possible for Socrates to talk about duties to society being formed out of a contract made with the society— surely the forerunner of the social contract view—nevertheless, Socrates presented a forceful argument that the deeper relationship was more intimate and familial, more like the son connected to the father, than a contractual relationship.

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ture, create and reinforce this ideal self, along with a cluster of related practices and meanings, I propose that there are cognitive ideals and norms that are reinforced by practices and a cluster of related meanings; this is what I mean by “thinkways”. The focus of this paper concerns reductionism. I believe that “reductionism” is one among a cluster of concepts that forms a EuroAmerican thinkway, and I propose to unpack this dominant EuroAmerican cognitive thinkway with the aim of questioning its hegemony. What I have against reductionism, especially ontological reductionism, is not its power in certain situations, or its usefulness as one cognitive strategy among others. Rather, when it rises to the level of a thinkway, when it is not analysed for its usefulness in situations in which it is used, when it becomes the default position in our thinking, when individual and institutional practices and accepted meanings perpetuate and reproduce the hegemony of such cognition so that alternative views are viewed as Other, then the concept becomes an impediment to progress and an obstacle to good thinking. And this condition is especially true in science, which is such a dominant force in the contemporary world, analogous to the empires of the past in their ability to reproduce their culture worldwide. My approach is not entirely new, of course. Others, such as Thomas Kuhn (1966) in his discussion of paradigms, have analysed related approaches to the dominance of certain ideas and meanings. However, my approach is distinguished by its cross-cultural method, its reliance on bringing evidence from non-EuroAmerican cultures. I will do this in two ways: on the one hand, I will specifically discuss non-EuroAmerican approaches to cognition that are non-reductionistic, and on the other hand, I will juxtapose the cluster of concepts, the conceptual system of which “reductionism” is a part, with another cognitive approach and fall within the shadow of our dominant thinkway. The aim of this project is not to argue that an alternative approach is essentially correct; indeed, such an essentialist view would be a typically EuroAmerican approach. Rather, I wish to suggest that pluralism in cognitive approaches may be a more robust way of proceeding, even for science.

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3 Components of Reductionist Thinkway Let us turn now to elucidating two specific ideas that are fundamental to the reductionist thinkway: representation and atomism. Let us consider representation first. 3.1 Representation Traditionally, any adequate understanding of consciousness has to deal with the fact that consciousness represents the world. In the Cartesian model, which emphasized the wholly interior description of consciousness, a basic function of veridical consciousness was to re-present the world, e.g., to have an internal mental re-presentation of an external object. The whole procedure of Cartesian doubt called into question the possibility of having perfect representation, and yet the idea of representation was reintroduced and accepted in his argument for the existence of the external world (even if doubt remained about the adequacy of any particular representation). His copy-dualist analysis of mind put representation at its core. Contemporary views reject such blatant copy-dualism, but representation still remains a central idea in even the most reductionist of philosophies. I think this is the point being made by Velmans (1998) when he describes contemporary accounts of consciousness: “Events in the world still cause conscious experiences that are located in some quite different inner space—albeit in the brain, not in an inner, nonmaterial soul. In short, both dualists and reductionists agree that there is a clear separation of the external physical world from the world of conscious experience” (pp. 45-6). I will not follow Velmans to argue for a reflexive model of perception; he does quite an adequate job in making the argument. Rather, my goal is to bring attention to a EuroAmerican thinkway, not offer an alternative approach. My point, then, is that the idea of representation constitutes a fundamental methodology in our thinking. Even contemporary reductionist approaches, which purport to offer a radically different conclusion about the problem of consciousness, nevertheless, retain a key ingredient of the rejected view, because it is such a fun-

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damental part of our thinkway. Thus, reductionists, those who offer modern, non-dualist, approaches to the problem of consciousness in reducing consciousness to brain processes, assume that consciousness represents, so representation has to be accounted for in any adequate philosophy of mind. 3.2 Atomism Atomism is a second assumption of the dominant EuroAmerican thinkway, as it has developed historically. I do not have to reiterate the history of the exchange of Aristotelian approach in science for atomistic approaches during the 16th and 17th centuries. The geocentric view failed to account for the movement of heavenly bodies, and the combination of the heliocentric view and atomistic approaches seemed to solve pressing problems not only in science but in navigation and in providing food for a growing population; these factors provided powerful motivation for change. But, it was the Cartesian and Lockean approaches that raised the acceptance of atomism from a useful strategy in science to a part of the EuroAmerican thinkway. Descartes’ dualism both gave the justification for the exclusion of science from the control of the Church, as well as it defined science (as that enterprise that investigated the material world, which is defined mechanistically). We will see that Locke not only incorporated atomism into his empirical understanding of the world, but he supplied the foundation for atomistic psychology and political science, thus demonstrating how atomism could be applied to other areas, as it was in economics and, to a certain extent, medicine, to name additional areas. Since Locke’s version of atomism was more consistent with Newtonian science, and it was applied to areas outside of the physical sciences, let us examine the basic tenants of Lockean atomism. Atomism asserts three things: 1) The world is composed of atoms. In this view, an atom should be understood as any indivisible, independent unit that ultimately constitutes that universe—whether it is a physical, psychological, political, or economic universe. Being indivisible (deriving from

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the Greek, atomos), atoms are the ultimate constituents of reality and provide the foundational units in the system. 2) Atoms exist in space. One can also say that atoms exist in a void, which points out that the function of the notion of space is to separate the atoms, making them inherently independent and without relationship to other atoms in their fundamental nature. This interpretation can be seen in juxtaposition to what I understand the implication of “space” is in Japanese, which is that space is what connects objects. However, the EuroAmerican approach implores us to view space as separating objects. This idea, however, leads to the third characteristic of atomism, since these atoms do not remained separate. 3) The job of science is to develop the laws of association among atoms. As Newton says in his 31st Query to the Optics of 1730, “And, therefore, that nature may be lasting, the changes of corporeal things are to be placed only in the various separations and new associations and motions of these permanent particles.” (qtd. in Berman 1981, p. 115). Understanding consists in finding the laws of how atoms combine to form larger units.

4 Reductionism becomes a Thinkway There are two steps in the reductionist view becoming a thinkway for EuroAmerican cultures. The first comes in the connection between atomism and reductionism. Atomism specifically describes an ontology, but it also suggests a cognitive approach to the world. If the ultimate constituents of the world are atoms, then if one wants to know the world, one has to know the atoms and how they associate. What one confronts in the world, of course, are tables and chairs, not atoms. But, atomism implies that if I am to understand tables and chairs, I have to understand their atoms and how they have associated to produce the tables and chairs; in other words, knowledge means re-

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ducing one’s understanding to the most basic level. Reductionism becomes an implicit imperative of atomism. Therefore, to accept an atomistic view of the world implies that I also accept reductionism as the method of arriving at knowledge. I have already discussed the representational understanding of knowing, so atomism and representation combine to assume that knowledge means reducing one’s understanding to the atomic units and representing them adequately in a theory. This step brings together reductionism, representation and atomism as the basis of knowledge. Thus, when a EuroAmerican thinkway gives an impulse toward reduction to the lowest level, then one naturally questions the ontological status of the higher realm. In a nutshell, this is the “problem of consciousness.” The second step in making this approach a thinkway come from employing the approach in so many different areas besides its roots in the physical sciences. Locke (1964) employed this approach in his understanding of the mind, noting that the mind was a tabula rasa; in other words, its first nature was to be a void, analogous to physical space. Ideas, mental atoms, were impressed on the slate, and the job of psychology was to explain the laws of how these simple ideas associated to become complex ideas. Behaviourist psychology is simply Lockean atomism applied to atomic behaviours. Additionally, Locke (1980) employed atomism in his view of social contract, with humans being the political atoms found in a void-like state of nature, with the social contract supplying the laws of association of these atoms into a larger unit. The social contract view is simply atomism applied to politics. Laissez-faire capitalism also reflects this atomistic approach, and arguably medicine. Thus, the reductionistic thinkway has become imbedded culturally in how we think about a range of issues. To be fair, it should be noted that applying a thinkway within a culture is a complicated affair, more so than I can address in this paper. For instance, although I have so far been talking about EuroAmerican culture, one does not find the impulse to reductionism equally in all EuroAmerican cultures, and not equally in all areas of human endeavour. For instance, Payer (1996) argues that there are interestingly different approaches to the theory and prac-

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tice of medicine within several EuroAmerican cultures. One contrast she makes is between American and French medicine. The basic approach of American medicine, for instance, is “the virus in the machine,” such that the default position in diagnosis, as well as how one treats illnesses, becomes that one must aggressively attack the virus in the machine. On the other hand, the fundamental approach in French medicine, Payer asserts, revolves around the idea of terrain, a word difficult to translate into English, but it seems to relate to one’s constitution. French diagnosis does not follow the American practice of listing all possibilities and then eliminating all of them except one; rather, the physician is taught to diagnosis by putting all the symptoms together, like pieces in a puzzle; thus, it is a more holistic and less atomistic approach. And, in French medicine, one seeks to modify the terrain, rather than fight germs. Thus, although I cannot discuss the issue further in this paper, the reductionist thinkway is probably more dominant in a greater variety of contexts in some EuroAmerican societies (particularly in the US) than others. Nevertheless, I believe that the basic impulse to reductionism exists throughout EuroAmerican culture.

5 The Narrowness of Reductionism The discussion of different approaches to medicine brings me to the last point in my argument, that it is possible to conceive of an alternative to the impulse to reductionism. Although I will mainly use material from non-EuroAmerican cultures, it is worth noting, pursing the differences in American and French medicine, that as a result of their different approaches to medicine, fewer invasive procedures are employed in intensive care in France, and yet there is no noticeable difference in the two societies in patients doing well (Payer 1996, p. 66). The alternatives that exist in EuroAmerican cultures also show that reductionism is too narrow.

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Again, I want to highlight the point that reductionism is not viewed simply as one among many strategies that are viable.* Reductionism has become part of a cluster of ideas that mutually reinforce each other and make up our thinkway: among these ideas are atomism, representation, foundationalism, mind as reason/computation, essentialism, and mechanism, to name a few. Reductionist thinking based on atomism assumes that these atoms form the foundation that must be represented in knowledge. In turn, this approach implies essentialism, as these atomistic elements are separated by “space” and thus display essential properties in their natures. Given the ubiquity of atomistic thinking, reductionism has become part of our thinkway. It is not accepted merely as one useful strategy among many, but reductionism is de rigour, the order of the day. Thus, one has an impulse to reductionism, as it has become virtually synonymous with rational thinking, centrally in the sciences, which has employed the atomistic paradigm most straightforwardly. Now, however, I want to turn to evidence in cross-cultural psychology to emphasize that the EuroAmerican thinkway that encompasses reductionism turns out to be rather unusual among the world’s cultures. Let me contrast this reductionist view with another way of thinking, one that I have studied on the small Indonesian island of Bali. Rather than adopting the reductionist view that knowledge consists in knowing the essential elements and representing them, the Balinese take a more contextual approach. The phrase, ”desa, kala, patra,” is basic to understanding their approach to knowledge. It can be translated as place, time and circumstance. In other words, knowledge must be contextual zed such that any understanding takes into consideration the place, time and circumstance of the knower and the known. The idea that there could be one atomistic, essential understanding doesn’t make sense to them, which is not to say that they cannot assume reductionism as a strategy. Hobart (1990) points out: “essentializing is a strategy, or style, to which Balinese resort in various circumstances,” so that “Balinese on occasion do enunciate *

My point about the difference between American and French medicine does not contradict this view, but only makes it more complex by showing that there are other social factors that are at work in any society that may compete for acceptance in specific areas, such as medicine (which has a long history in each society).

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what they hold to be definitive” (p. 117). In other words, we are not talking about a people being incapable of choosing a reductionist strategy, or their being unwilling to see its benefit and choose it on occasion; rather, the Balinese lack the impulse to reductionism. It is not the default position for them; it is not their thinkway. Related to the notion of contextual understanding is their appreciation for polysemy. As Geertz (1973) has pointed out, the Balinese have a preference for polysemy, the proliferation of meaning as opposed to a reduction of meanings. The Balinese prefer a symbol that is rich to one that is simplistically clear, and one that is deep to one that is apparent. To the Balinese, reality is so complex that no reduced characterization can adequately grasp it. The contexts are so numerous that one can never grasp the world fully with any one perspective. At best we can examine manifestations in the world, but we can never grasp the world in any essentialist manner. There is ample evidence that other non-EuroAmerican cultures prefer a contextual approach to understanding, rather than an abstract, essentialist, one. For instance, Sylvia Scribner (Hunt 1982) conducted research among preliterate peoples, giving them examples of syllogistic thinking. For instance, she asked: All people who own houses pay a house tax. Boima does not pay a house tax. Does Boima own a house?

She was surprised to find so many people ignoring the syllogistic logic and answering affirmatively that Boima owned a house (in fact, the one just down the lane, a fact they were sure of). She discovered that they were capable of abstract, syllogistic thinking, but they thought it was not appropriate in many situations; in further investigation, she found that the increase in abstract thinking did not correlate with increased age or intelligence, but to formal schooling. In other words, such cognition was a product of a particular type of cognitive training.

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6 Examples of Reductionist Thinkway Let me be clear about my argument. It makes sense to me to accept the reductionist thinkway as a typical strategy in science. The urge to get at the root of the problem and the desire too “get it right” by reflecting or representing the way things are has often proven to be a successful approach. Indeed, it is no accident that science developed within this thinkway, and it has become a methodological instantiation of the thinkway. Nevertheless, in spite of its successes, I believe there is ample evidence that a thinkway that carries an impulse to reductionism can be dysfunctional. Let me quickly offer two examples from religion, both reflecting American societies more than European societies, and then I will turn to another crosscultural example. The first example from religion concerns the continuing debate between creationists and evolutionary biologists, which is a product of both groups accepting the reductionist thinkway. Rather than accepting that there are alternative legitimate cognitive strategies to knowledge, both groups argue that they are representing the world as it really is. Fundamentalist religion can take itself to be contradicting scientific results precisely because it believes that knowledge is representation. The fact that large numbers of people cannot understand that religion inherently is not best thought of as employing the reductionist thinkway speaks to the power and the ubiquity of the general acceptance of this thinkway, showing that it has become synonymous with thinking correctly. The other, related, example is the estimate of 8,196 protestant denominations existing in the West (Barrett 1982). The different denominations result from conflict, from each of them believing that they have the right representation of the religious world, no matter how small their difference from other denominations. Each of them wants to “get it right,” to represent the essential nature of religious knowledge, down to doctrinal minutia. Rather than thinking that such diversity is a benefit, a wonderful result of nature being so complex that each of thee denominations reflect different legitimate aspects of the religious universe (as is the tendency in Hinduism), these denomina-

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tions become competing sects bemoaning the failure of the others to “get it right.” Again, we see the reductionist thinkway accepted as the appropriate mode of thinking. Let me return to a cross-cultural contrast of thinkways. Shweder and Bourne (1984) carried out a study in India and America, asking subjects to describe a good friend. They discovered that the participants used different descriptors to a statistically significant degree, which they argued pointed to adopting different ways of thinking as well as possessing different concepts of the person. While Americans tended to describe their friend in abstract, contextless terms, such as to say that they were intelligent or kind, Indians tended to describe their friends in very specific ways – as being able to solve difficult problems, or having brought food to them when they were sick. For Shweder and Bourne, these differences pointed to different concepts of the person. I believe also that these approaches to description of persons point out different thinkways, different assumptions about the world and how one comes to an adequate understanding of it. Indians were quite capable of abstract, contextless thinking, but on the whole they found it inappropriate as a strategy in describing persons. They preferred a more contextual, concrete description. I agree with Shweder and Bourne in attributing this difference to their rejection of atomistic, reductionist thinking.*

*

Indeed, I believe that there is an intimate connection among concepts of the person, a way of thinking, and a thinkway containing reductionism or polysemy. The EuroAmerican thinkway has been described by Geertz (1983) in his classic statement: “The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against the social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures” (p. 59). This atomistic notion of the self fits together with and reinforces reductionism and abstractness in thinking, all becoming aspects of our EuroAmerican thinkway.

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7 Conclusion I have raised the issue of reducing consciousness to physical processes to a much more general level than the issue is usually dealt with by introducing the term, thinkways. On this level, when discussing cultural cognitive proclivities, the argument has to be more general and less precise than the arguments typically are in philosophical psychology (one is reminded of the similar argument in Aristotle concerning ethics). At this level, all one can do is present an array of arguments and data to make one’s conclusions persuasive. To that end, I have argued that there exists a EuroAmerican thinkway, a particular way of thinking that is mediated through culture and institutions such that we are socialized with an impulse to accept a certain way of thinking as appropriate. Like any assumption, it is seldom made explicit and, in effect, becomes the default position. Of course, this fact does not automatically undercut the thinkway. In many instances, it will be employed with positive results. The problem is not that it can be a useful strategy, but that it is automatically used, even when the results may be dysfunctional. Let me point out the problem in an analogy: we may have employed in childhood a strategy that turned out to be successful against bullies, but in adulthood we continue to employ it automatically without questioning whether the old strategy is the best one in the particular contemporary situation; indeed, such a strategy is usually so deep in our psyche that we would be hard pressed even to recognize it as a strategy. Through the use of the term, thinkways, I have tried to point out that cognition is a cultural product, and that culture has embedded in us the impulse to think in certain ways. I believe that our impulse toward reductionism is part of a cluster of ideas that compose our EuroAmerican thinkway, so that we are driven to apply it in all situations. The attempt to reduce consciousness to material processes, I want to suggest, is a result of this impulse. As such, this impulse ought to be questioned. I have not argued in this paper that such a reduction is inadequate, but I have only set the stage for such an argument. The heavy lifting of making that argument will have to be done by others, but I think that I have made such a task lighter. Typically, the argument against

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reduction is a Herculean task, precisely because we already possess the cultural impulse to accept reductionism. It is a part of our thinkway, a set of ideas about epistemology and ontology that is reproduced through social practices. The only way that we can overcome the overwhelming influence of this impulse is to make it explicit, and to recognize it for what it is. Much as Aristotle argued that the only way to act morally is first to consciously recognize what our tendencies to act are, and then secondly to bend over backwards to compensate for these tendencies, we need first to understand our EuroAmerican thinkway, and then compensate for it.

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References Barrett, D. A. (1982). The World Christian Encyclopaedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berman, M. (1981). The Reenchantment of Nature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). Person, Place and Conduct in Bali. In C. Geertz (Ed.). The Interpretation of Culture (pp. 360-411). New York: Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1983). Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books. Hobart, M. (1990). The Patience of Plants: A note on agency in Bali. Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 24(2), 90-135. Hunt, M. (1982). The Universe Within. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kuhn, T. (1966). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Locke, J. (1964). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: New American Library. Locke, J. (1980). Second Treatise of Government. New York: Hackett Publishing Company. Markus, H. R., Mullally, P. R., & Kitayama, S. (1997). Selfways: Diversity in Modes of Cultural Participation. In U. Neisser & D. A. Jopling (Eds.). The Conceptual Self in Context Culture, Experience, Self-Understanding (pp. 13-74). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Payer, L. (1996). Medicine and Culture. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Plato. (1975). Crito, The Trial and Death of Socrates (pp. 43-54). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

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Shweder, R. A., & Bourne, E. J. (1984). Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-culturally? In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.). Culture theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (pp. 158-199). New York: Cambridge University Press. Velmans, M. (1998). Goodbye to Reductionism. In S. Hameroff & A. Kaszniak & A. Scott (Eds.). Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates (pp. 45-52). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Self-Appropriation: The Dynamic Structure of Human Consciousness Donald P. Merrifield, S.J.

1 Science, Philosophy and Theology: My Inner Dialogue This is a personal essay in which I will explore the challenge that consciousness studies poses to my conviction that there is reality that transcends physical processes. I was drawn to enter the Jesuit order while completing my undergraduate degree in physics at the California Institute of Technology and have remained at once a believing Christian and a scientist by training, strongly drawn to the power of the contemporary scientific view of the universe and of consciousness. During my Jesuit studies, I was introduced the Catholic philosophical tradition in the years of the flourishing of so-called “Missouri Valley Thomism” at Saint Louis University and, after earning a doctoral degree in physics at MIT, did four years of theological studies during the Second Vatican Council, when some of the great shifts already made in Catholic theological thought were being formally accepted. These three modes of experiencing and thinking about the world – scientific, philosophical and theological – have been in dialogue within me, then, for all of my adult life, complementing each other in a way that has opened me to exploring a many-faceted approach to the study of consciousness. I am enheartened by the first-person approaches to the study of consciousness which are now being seriously explored and accepted and which are well expressed in the title of Varela and Shear’s The View from Within. This view from within is essentially based on personal and subjective accounts from which an objective account can be developed. This is my own

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way of proceeding in my reflections on the experience of my own consciousness. For I am convinced that it is not unduly complicated to communicate a subjective experience in a sufficiently objective manner so that others may relate to it as a description of their own subjective experience. In fact, such a communication is what I plan to do in this presentation. Objectivity that is trustworthy arises from intersubjective agreement, our interpersonal escape from solipsism. True statements are first developed by an individual’s experience of “it makes sense to me” or “I feel good about this,” then are tested on others who see that they make sense. It does not at all corrupt science’s self-image to say that the statements of science, about both data and theory, are in the first instance accounts of personal experiences, about what “makes sense” or is “intellectually pleasing” to an individual. These statements can then be tested intersubjectively to see if peers indeed resonate with it in the same way, also having an “Aha!” experience. Our reflective, first-person approaches can also be scientific as we, for example, explore the dynamic structure of how we come to know and discover, through dialogue with others, that this is indeed the way our consciousness is and functions. (cf. Max Velmans, “Intersubjective Science” in Varela and Shear, pp. 299-306)

2 Philosophical Reflection on Experiences of Self as a Phenomenology Much of our Western philosophical tradition is rooted very simply in reflection upon our experience of self and its operations. Aristotle, as a start, has much more to offer us in his De Anima than in his Physica or De Caelo, precisely because we have immediate experiential data on inner selves and we do not have such immediate access to the physical world, including the heavens. Aristotle’s descriptive analysis of perception, understanding and reason is based on a careful phenomenology, and his philosophy of human knowing is not dependent on his ontological language of “body” and “soul”. As opposed to Plato, Aristotle’s approach lacks any suggestion of dualism.

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Aristotle’s philosophical point of view and thought was incorporated into the Christian tradition through the work of Thomas Aquinas. The common theme is a focus on the uniqueness of human consciousness as explored through the actual structure of our knowing and our choosing. The most impressive contemporary interpreter of Thomas Aquinas, for me, is Bernard J. F. Lonergan (1904–1984), philosopher and, theologian, whose fundamental studies are found in Insight: A Study in Human Understanding (1957) and in Method in Theology (1972). He began his studies within the University of Louvain’s Higher Institute of Philosophy one of whose main tasks was the epistemological justification of metaphysics in the face of the Kantian critique of knowledge. There are two main roadblocks to exploring Lonergan’s Insight and, indeed, his other writings. First, there can be a suspicion that the theologian in Lonergan is primary and that the first more than six hundred pages of his key book seem inexorably to lead the reader to a demonstration of the existence of God and then, with the same brilliant sort of analysis, open the way for the Christian faith in a chapter entitled “Special Transcendent Knowledge”. A second possible roadblock is the difficult manner of Lonergan’s expression and explanation throughout writings, which makes it quite a challenge to begin untangling for oneself his particular approach to the study of consciousness, the one that I myself find so very valuable and which I have indeed also discovered to be the fundamental structure of my own consciousness. As to the “hidden theological agenda”, it is not that hidden and has not contaminated, as it were, the arguments on consciousness, even if Lonergan is clearly in the Christian tradition of fides quaerens intellectum. Faith may have encouraged the understanding, but this understanding of understanding is approachable and justifiable on its own. As for the density of the prime source, I have found such commentaries as Desires of the Human Heart of much help, as well as the collections of Lonergan lectures and articles cited in the references. In not a few of these presentations included in these collections, Lonergan clarifies his focus on the distinctively human characteristic of understanding or insight, which is such a central and crucial area of our experience and which seems rarely touched upon explicitly by other investigators of con-

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sciousness. His address to faculty and students at Marquette University, in Collection (1967), entitled “Dimensions of Meaning”, for example, illustrates well the primacy of “meaning” over “reality”: At this point, permit me to resume what I have been trying to say. I have been meeting the objection that meaning is a merely secondary affair, that what counts is the reality that is meant, and not merely the meaning that refers to it. My answer has been that the functions of meaning are larger than the objection envisages. I would not dispute that for a child learning to talk, his little world of immediacy comes first and that the words he uses are only an added grace. But as the child develops into a man, the world of immediacy shrinks into an inconspicuous and not too important corner of the real world, which is the world we know only through the mediation of meaning. Further, there is man’s transformation of his environment, a transformation that is effected through intentional acts that envision ends, elect means, secure collaborators, direct operations. Finally, besides the transformation of nature, there is the transformation of man himself; and in this second transformation the role of meaning is not merely directive but also constitutive. (p. 255)

In a straightforward manner, we are taken from the level of responding to our understandings and the judgments that we make about them into the full realm of human endeavour. Especially of interest to me is that aspect of our actions which imply moral decisions, which might indeed include all that we do with reflectivity, be it doing further research, deciding to create a musical composition or change our baby’s diapers. I will return later to that move from the “truth”, the way we judge things are, to the “good,” how we respond to what we discover about ourselves and the world about us. A sociobiologist might hold that my own experience of “zest for the infinite” is simply rooted in my genes and/or my family life and nurturing, but I prefer to place that zest within the structure of my consciousness. Such an origin has become particularly obvious to me in my reflecting on Lonergan’s presentation in contemporary form of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition’s analysis of the dynamic structure of human consciousness and in my reaching a reasonable appropriation of that dynamic structure and its self-transcen-

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dence: “The immanent source of transcendence in man is his detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know.” (Lonergan 1957, p. 636) There are many sections in Insight that open Lonergan’s unique contributions to a wider circle of students of the self in a quite direct style, and I offer the following as an opener to the basic questions: From preliminary clarifications, we turn to the issue, Am I a knower? Each has to ask the question of himself. But anyone who asks it is rationally conscious. For the question is a question for reflection, a question to be met with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; and asking the question does not mean repeating the words but entering the dynamic state in which dissatisfaction with mere theory manifests itself in a demand for fact, for what is so. Further, the question is not any question. If I ask it, I know what it means. What do I mean by ‘I’? The answer is difficult to formulate, but strangely, in some obscure fashion, I know what it means without formulation, and by that obscure yet familiar awareness I find fault with various formulations of what is meant by ‘I’. In other words, ‘I’ has a rudimentary meaning from consciousness and it envisages neither the multiplicity nor the diversity of contents and conscious acts but rather the unity that goes along with them. But if ‘I’ has some such rudimentary meaning from consciousness, then consciousness supplies the fulfilment of one element in the conditions for affirming that I am a knower. (p. 328)

3 The Interconnected Levels of Human Consciousness As Lonergan analyses human consciousness, four interconnected levels are presented for our personal verification: experience, understanding, judgment, and moral decision-making. There is a dynamic structure between these levels that is essentially the same for all varieties of human knowing, from common sense or everyday discoveries and responses through all the areas of scientific knowledge. The presentation of these levels of consciousness in The Desires of the Human Heart by Vernon Gregson explains the unrevisability of the levels of consciousness as presented by Lonergan:

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Lonergan suggests that there is a sense in which the levels he has named are revisable and a sense in which they are not. They are certainly revisable in terms of the names he has given them. Might they better be called receptivity, inquiry, affirmation, action, thereby highlighting different aspects of the four levels? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But naming the pattern is one thing and the reality that is named is another. It is the reality that is named, the processes themselves, which is unrevisable. Even here Lonergan is not saying that knowing and choosing must be the way he describes them, but only that factually they are that way, and he asks you to verify that for yourself. If knowing would factually change, then obviously the description would need to change as well. So might Lonergan be wrong about the facts of our knowing and our choosing? How would one prove him so? Perhaps one could point to the data he hasn’t attended to or point out new elements in the data he has attended to? But that is to affirm the crucial importance of the data gathering or experiencing level. Perhaps instead one discovers meanings he has not grasped. But that is to affirm the crucial importance of the understanding level. Perhaps one discovers evidence that disproves understanding. But that is to affirm the crucial importance of the judging level. Perhaps, finally, one makes a different decision than he makes about what to do with what one has discovered. But that is to affirm the crucial importance of the deciding level. In other words, one would have to use the very method that he has described in any attempt to prove him wrong. (Gregson, I., p. 24)

Our immediate experiences, then, both of the external world and of our own inner selves, cry out for analysis, an attempt at explanation. We ask “What is going on here?” or “What is happening?” or “What does that mean?” or “What’s that?” whether we are attempting to solve a murder mystery, looking at some new data from a linear accelerator or observing a strange animal on our front porch. Tentatively, we come upon a possible explanation, an hypothesis, or some general category, such as “raccoon”. In such a procedure, it is important for us to focus in an ordered fashion on the activities of our consciousness without fearing that there may be an implication of some mental substance or of some special faculty such as intellect or will. The claim here is that each of us, with some guidance and careful reflection, will always discover the same stages in our own conscious activities of knowing. This process needs distinction from Husserl’s phenomenology, which is well done in the Introduction to The Lonergan Reader:

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But there are many interior operations, and Edmund Husserl, for example, complained that, upon turning to the subject-as-subject, he felt himself adrift on an infinite sea. But Lonergan’s strategy is more deliberately planned. Whereas Husserl felt himself adrift, Lonergan anticipates and seeks out dynamic structures of operations. (Lonergan 1997, p.18)

First, we recognize that we attend to sense data, to the impressions made upon us by the external world and from within ourselves. Second, we seek to make sense out of these, find meanings in our experiences, and get insights into them. Third, we test our interpretations or explanations or concepts and are able to assert, at least tentatively, “So it is; that is rain on the window!” That is how we come to know the world about us and ourselves. It is quite different than just “taking a look.” (Tekippe, pp. 115ff) Our curiosity to figure things out is with us from our earliest days and we are active participants in responding to it. As I have mentioned above, an absolutely central assertion of this path of self-discovery is that the sense data remains primary and fundamental. There are no ideas apart from their sensed counterparts, their images, as Aristotle asserted in his On the Soul (De Anima, III, 7). Understanding takes place in the phantasm. Thus, on the title page of Insight, we find the powerful Aristotelian assertion: τὰ μὲν οὖν εἴδη τὸ νοητικὸν ἐν τοῖς φαντάσμασι  νοεῖ  or in my rough translation: “The idea or meaning is grasped in the images”. In fact, we have no words, even for the most “spiritual” of elements in our explanations that are not basically taken from our experience of the world about us. This is but an indication that we have no way of referring to that which we may believe transcends the physical except these concrete terms, such as “spirit,” which refers to breath, “insight,” which means “looking into,” “concept,” alluding to the fertilization process, and “person,” from “persona” or “mask.” As Thomas Aquinas phrases it the Summa Theologica (1, q. 85, a. 1, ad 5m): “…quia non potest intelligere etiam ea quorum species abstrahit, nisi convertendo se ad phantasmata” or “because it cannot understand that from which it abstracts the forms, except by converting itself to phantasms.” Ideas or meanings have no free existence in this way of reflect-

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ing on our inner life. They are always grasped only in their materiality. Thomas Aquinas puts a particularly strong emphasis on this when he speaks of “spiritual realities” such as “God,” insisting any understanding of such a term is within an image, say of a mountain, or even of the word itself or of its sound. The nearest thing to an immediate experience of other than the world about us is, of course, our self, the “I” that is only experienced as interacting with the objective reality in knowing and choosing. This presentation of the interconnected levels of human consciousness by Lonergan is then not a philosophical or psychological theory but data of consciousness that can be verified by each individual if they carefully reflect on how they go about understanding things and acting upon such understanding. There is no room here for just a “stream of consciousness,” but rather a methodologically structured consciousness is discovered, a selfaffirming desire to know, to figure out “what’s going on here.” Further, asserts Lonergan, as the above remarks of Gregson elaborate, any attempt to disprove that this is the way we operate must use the very method that is, in fact, the way we operate. The personal appropriation of how one indeed understands, Lonergan sees as an intellectual conversion. There is a dramatic move from recognizing the words and even understanding the reasonableness, perhaps even obviousness, of the structure and to coming to experience it as the way one functions in all of one’s conscious relationships with the world and oneself. It is self-appropriation: Insight may be described as a set of exercises in which, it is hoped, one attains selfappropriation. The question naturally arises, What does that mean and why go to all the trouble? Unfortunately, the question is so fundamental that to answer it is in a way more difficult than to attain self-appropriation… In other words, the simple matter of attaining self-appropriation can be complicated by an enormous series of surrounding questions that are all more difficult than the actual feat of attaining self-appropriation.

So does Lonergan introduce his Halifax lectures, contained in Understanding and Being: An Introduction and Companion to Insight (1980, p. 1).

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Actually, the citation from Insight which was given earlier in which Lonergan directs us to ask “Am I a knower?” and “What do I mean by ‘I’?” is the opening move towards the full self-appropriation of my own methodology of and immersion in knowing. It is a moment of personal intellectual conversion, as I have noted, that this coming to understand personally how we – or better I – come to understand things occurs. Theoretically, once this radical conversion has taken place, the reader of Lonergan might well throw away all the books and just go ahead with understanding all things, bit by bit! With the question “What do I mean by ‘I’?” we come, I believe, to an even deeper aspect of self-appropriation and radical recognition of the strangeness of being present to one’s self. It is, after all, no surprise that many of us with a scientific background feel quite uneasy with this ineffable encounter with self being presented as quite “real,” in spite of being irreducibly subjective. We do need to investigate the brain with ordinary scientific approaches, but the inner experience remains irreducible to its neural correlates in Lonergan’s approach, as in that of many others engaged in the study of human consciousness. As an aside, I seemed to detect smiles of more than ordinary gleefulness on the faces of Tibetan Buddhist monks photographed while allowing neuroscientists to put electrodes on their skulls as they meditated. Did they suggest that the investigators also try the meditation and taste the inner springs themselves, beyond their little echoes in electronic patterns? The way within is more fascinating than the scientific bias of many investigators suspect or will allow and has a straight-forward structure that can be self-verified. Going “inside” is finally the only way to know what is indeed going on there and indeed the only way to finally justify the scientific method itself. This seems to me the ultimate challenge to reductionism, that in order to assert that consciousness adds nothing to brain activity we use the very conscious reasoning processes and means of justification which are said to be of no significance, if not an illusion. Lonergan refers to our levels of knowing as transcendental method for they are basic to all our knowing. They transcend all methods and are operative in all methods, as Gregson observes. Always we check things out, by

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looking around carefully and observing all we can or through elaborate instruments, then formulating some explanation, an insight, be it about a simple thing in ordinary life or a grand mathematical theory. When tested against our experience, our insight is then affirmed as indeed the case. Let us turn then to careful reflection upon the dynamic structure of our human consciousness as available for discovery by each of us in our own activities of knowing and choosing.

4 Attending, Experiencing and the Gathering of Data The first stage of attending to our consciousness of our experiences of the world about us as well as our experiences within ourselves has, of course, given rise to endless philosophical viewpoints throughout history. For example, there is the well-known Cartesian problem of assuring ourselves that our ideas correspond with reality. Today in consciousness studies, there has been a focus on qualia and on the question of objectivity or how to get outside our experiences. As to the judgment of what is an objective experience and what is not, let me again turn to the Halifax lectures (Lonergan 1980, p.217): One cannot settle this question of the difference between the given and the abnormally produced by saying that when one is normal one is able to take a look and see what is there, and when one is not normal one takes a look and sees what is not there. In either case, all one has is the look, and to know whether one is normal or abnormal one would have to have a super-look in which one was looking not merely at one’s looking but at what it was looking at… There is no solution on this side of the look. The solution has to be inquiry, intelligence, working out the characteristics of normal and abnormal states, and making the judgment that when these characteristics arise the man is out of his head, and he will not be responsible for what he says and does.

Although “the given,” whether the palm trees out there waving in the wind or my enjoyment in working on this paper or the siren in the distance, is not immediately objective for me unless I have passed, however subtly, to a judgment of what is going on. I notice that the interpretation of the siren in

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saying to myself “There is an ambulance on University Avenue!” may have an error or two in it and that it would be safer to say “There is some sort of emergency vehicle moving somewhere down the hill.” Unless we deliberately focus on gathering data, as happens in detective stories or in scientific research or also when our sense impressions are confused or indistinct, we may actually move to judgment quite too rapidly. In spite of not seeing some figure in the dark very clearly, we maybe are driven to move ahead to put some name on it too rapidly, saying too easily what is going on. That is but one of the possible biases in our process of discovery, rash judgments, not getting all the data possible, being happy with some guess as to the meaning. I might add at this point that the data we gather is, obviously, not only from the outside but also from our sensible awareness of our body and from our myriads of feelings and desires, and from our memories. Yet, in discovering the dynamic structure that moves us on to seeking an understanding of all that we experience, we linger not over our “stream of consciousness,” moving beyond phenomenal or psychic consciousness towards rational consciousness.

5 Understanding: Grasping the Meaning of Our Experience When we have observed some object or situation of which we have become aware, howsoever we do the investigation, we might say we ponder a solution or the meaning in an effort to grasp what this is we have encountered or what is happening or why it is happening or any number of other questions. We are faced all but inevitably with wondering, unless we are distracted. We are seeking understanding and the process is totally natural to us. At times the verification may be so quick that we are not aware of this step as distinct from our affirming that solution as our explanation. We may immediately recognize that it is the neighbour’s dog that awoke us, not recognizing the distinction between our theorizing and actually verifying it. Of course, we can make

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mistakes through overly quick judgments or biases in our evaluations, as I have noted above. One of the major contributions of Lonergan’s Insight is, as I have noted, the wide range of human ways of knowing that he discusses. Thus, from some basically “common sense” concept as “dog” we can move through all sorts of ways of discovery to the most mathematical “explanations” of the universe, as the general theory of relativity. In all these varieties of knowing we recognize the same structured levels of rational consciousness at work. Part of the process of self-appropriation is to recognize the continual searching for answers that we experience, our pure desire to know, to understand what is happening on all occasions. Of course, many explanations are in fact quite erroneous or incomplete in spite of our efforts of investigation and so further questions arise and the quite amazing process of investigating goes on.

6 Judgment: Weighing the Evidence Rational consciousness, judging that our thinking actually fits the situation we are asking questions about, is the fullness of understanding and it is our self-conscious grasping of being. The presence of judgment or affirmation, the answering of “yes” to “Is that indeed the case?” brings us to this level of rational consciousness and to a personal engagement with the truth, as limited and revisable as it might be. To become aware of this stage of how our consciousness works and to affirm for ourselves that we are continually exploring what is may awaken us to the fact that our “pure desire to know” has “all that is” for its scope. (Tekippe, p.136) As Thomas Aquinas (1963) puts it in The Summa Theologica: Therefore properly speaking truth is in the intellect in its function of affirming and denying one reality or another; and not in the senses, nor in the intellect knowing the meaning. (1.16.2)

Here is the beginning of metaphysics, namely the analysis of that which is implied in our judgments of whatever we experience when we come up

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with some insight and say “Yes!” “Being qua being” certainly sounds quite vague at first as the object of philosophical reflection and study. It may indeed seem that philosophers have tossed the notion of “being” around for centuries with no agreement. “So, let us go back to serious questions like those the physicists tackle!” many would no doubt say. I am convinced, however, that reflecting on our rational consciousness and doing some questioning about “being” as really the most radical stuff of all reality, if I may so call it, is totally worth the effort! Of course, the affirmation of being as the object of metaphysics does eliminate physics as fundamental and ultimate for our understanding of the existence of the universe. Matter is a way of being, but not identical with being.

7 Action: Response to What We Have Discovered Beyond these three interacting levels of knowing, there is the consequent level of responding to or making choices and acting upon them. As the first three are aimed at discovering what is true about some situation we have encountered, this final level is a response to what is judged to be good or of value. A wide range of possibilities are, of course, possible, including the desire for further investigation, an eagerness to share our discovery, or perhaps just delight or awe. Most powerful for our own sense of self-definition, no doubt, is the response we call a moral decision, what in these circumstances it would be good for us to do. Thus, we are drawn inexorably through our grasp of a situation to a judgment of what we are to do, although we may not actually do what we judge to be the right thing, as we can readily experience. Let me present this in Lonergan’s words about our human experience as existential subjects: So far, our reflections on the subject have been concerned with him as a knower, as one that experiences, understands and judges. We have now to think of him as a doer, one who deliberates, evaluates, chooses, acts. Such doing, at first sight, affects, modifies, changes the world of objects. But even more it affects the subject

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himself. For human doing is free and responsible. Within it is contained the reality of morals, of building up and destroying character, of achieving personality or failing in that task. By his own acts the human subject makes himself what he is to be, and he does this freely and responsibly; indeed, he does so precisely because his acts are the free and responsible expressions of himself. (1997, p. 429)

Equally as powerful for our self-definition as grasping our understanding process, then, is our reflective appropriation of that response we call a moral decision or asking and responding to what in these particular circumstances it would be good for us to do. This is the key area for the development of ourselves and of society and is based, of course, on our grasp of the good as unconditioned, as is our grasp of the truth. Conscience is the morally conscious self, as Walter E. Conn expresses particularly well in his chapter in The Desire of the Human Heart: Having claimed that conscience is the morally conscious self in its drive to go beyond itself, we must now stress that this radical drive for self-transcendence is a dynamism of the whole person. Any intellectualist suggestion of the foregoing cognitive-structural sketch notwithstanding, the personal drive for self-transcendence is affective at its very core. Lonergan insists that our feelings – joys and sorrows, fears and desires – give our intentional consciousness its mass and momentum, its drive and power. (Gregson, p. 40)

8 Psychic and Rational Consciousness: Emergence and Higher Integration Again, I return to the assertion that this presentation of the interconnected levels of human consciousness, including the level of our judgments of value or good, is not a philosophical or psychological theory but can be verified by each individual if they carefully reflect on how they go about understanding things and acting upon such understanding. There is more to human consciousness than the physical and biological or neurological levels can explain, for human understanding and human choosing are open to the unconditional in a manner that their empirical concomitants cannot be. This opens the

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way to affirming that with the appearance of humans a new reality has emerged beyond the simpler, concrete consciousness of animals. This new reality is a “higher integration of otherwise coincidental manifolds of images and data” as “sensitive consciousness is a higher integration of otherwise coincidental manifolds of changes in neural tissues.” (Lonergan 1957, p. 451) This higher integration or synthesis that has allowed humans to move into rational consciousness and, indeed, into the experience of ourselves as persons is totally immersed in the sensitive and neuronal substrates from which it emerges and yet is open to the discovery and recognition of truth and of value. Human consciousness goes beyond animal consciousness, which we cannot directly know but can experience within our own consciousness. We have subsumed that level of consciousness into a totally appropriate “next step,” if I may so phrase it. The appearance of human consciousness is indeed a step quite within nature, as is the emergence of animal consciousness, which is also not reducible to its biochemical and neural substrates. Lonergan would find there to be no “hard problem” of consciousness. Referring to animal consciousness as “psychic development,” he says in Insight (Lonergan 1957, p. 456): However, neural development merely supplies the underlying manifold for psychic development. The later is conditioned by the former but it consists neither in neural tissues nor in neural configurations nor in neural events but in a sequence of increasingly differentiated and integrated sets of capacities for perceptiveness, for aggressive and affective response, for memory, for imaginative projects, and for skilfully and economically executed responses.

In Lonergan’s reflection on the notion of development, he describes it as “the linked sequence of dynamic higher integrations. An initial coincidental manifold is systematized and modified by a higher integration so as to call forth a second,” (ibid, p.452) and so on. That the integration at the organic level of the molecular substrate is open to objective, third-person analysis, while the integration at the psychic level, in animals including humans, and, further, at the level of intelligence moves to inner experiences inaccessible to the scientific method seems to cause Lonergan no problem at all. I do find the

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distinction between the specifically human level of intelligence and the psychic or sensitive level which is shared with animals very valuable, drawing us to focus that which is unique in the dynamic structure of our consciousness in a way which stresses the integration in our consciousness of the sensitive through intelligence and consequent responsible action. I must acknowledge, obviously, that the vast majority of humanity does not reach a self-appropriation that can be carefully articulated nor do they have anywhere near the amount of self-absorption that philosophers such as Lonergan indulge in! On the other hand, at a practical level of common sense people do move through the same dynamic levels of consciousness and may reach and live out authentic moral convictions. My own experiences in ministry and spiritual direction affect my religious conviction of the significance of each individual’s life, of that making of herself or himself what she or he is to be. I am unable to bring these experiences of meaningful existence together with the view that each human life is ultimately a piece in the vast process of evolution, as I would well concede in the case of individual animals. What puzzles me, then, is why anyone should be authentic, honest, well-behaved in general, kind to others, even in their thoughts, and, indeed, grateful for being alive as they move toward death? Must I encourage others in my last agony with uplifting last words of acceptance of it all, while that which is my very self dissolves before their very eyes? Furthermore, I am even more confused by the fact that we are drawn to this sort of good, kindly living and try to carry it out, in spite of all our coexisting contrary drives. After all, many scientific writers today assert that all of our moral sense, along with the illusion of free choice, can be understood from the study of our genetic background, neuronal patterns, and emotional feelings, along with the findings of cultural anthropology. I hold that investigation from within can show each of us that, though there are no “bad dogs,” we can be bad people – and good people – who are morally responsible for how we act. Such personal analysis of the structure of our consciousness of our moral responsibility, an “examination of conscience,” is an irreducible datum of our self-awareness. No doubt Lonergan’s focus on the search for meaning and the search for the good as rooted in the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions only fires

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my enthusiasm for seeing more to my consciousness than my brain, as beautiful as that is, or even a beautiful mind emerging from the brain somehow, and yet in no way being beyond the natural, while not reducible to the physical. In his Method in Theology (p. 69) Lonergan states well the implications of the search for meaning: To deliberate about ‘x’ is to ask whether ‘x’ is worthwhile. To deliberate about deliberating is to ask whether any deliberating is worthwhile. Has ‘worthwhile’ any ultimate meaning? Is moral enterprise consonant with the world? We praise the developing subject ever more capable of attention, insight, reasonableness, responsibility. We praise progress and denounce every manifestation of decline. But is the universe on our side, or are we just gamblers and, if we are gamblers, are we not perhaps fools, individually struggling for authenticity and collectively endeavouring to snatch progress from the ever mounting welter of decline? The questions arise and, clearly, our attitudes and our resoluteness may be profoundly affected by the answers. Does there or does there not necessarily exist a transcendent, intelligent ground of the universe? Is that ground or are we the primary instance of moral consciousness? Are cosmogenesis, biological evolution, historical process basically cognate to us as moral beings or are they indifferent and so alien to us?

Of course, these questions will not remain as questions for Lonergan, for insightful judgment is invited by any question, especially as central questions as these. Perhaps most impressive to me in my coming to self-appropriation of the dynamic structure of my own consciousness is the radically richer awareness I have come to of the openness of my mind and heart to the fullness of being, of all that is. This is a taste of that self-transcendence that a focus on the way one comes to know and respond to knowing leads to. In an opposite way to the meditation or contemplation of the apophatic or via negative traditions, this is a kataphatic or via positiva way of self-transcending through tasting oneself in the midst of the full dynamism of interaction with the world. Yet “the beyond” is found within even as we engage ourselves totally in that which is without. (cf. D’Aquili and Newburg, pp.110-116) For the mind steeped in science, as mine had been, any further movement to considerations of possible personal survival, ecstatic as it may be in the divine presence outside of space and time, seems to me utterly unrelated

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to all we know about the evolving universe. Yet, it must then be seen as one of the most firmly established illusions of human culture, or an act of blind religious faith, unless a self-appropriation of the dynamic structure of consciousness does give a valid “intimation of immortality” and a taste of that divinity that Thomas Aquinas says we say much more clearly that it is than what it is! However, I would not want to end with the impression that there is some “religious threat” in any personal investigation of how we come to know and decide. I would not hold that any move towards self-appropriation inevitably puts one on the path to religious faith. This assimilation of our inner selves, at once so radical and so obvious, does challenge the “faith” in science as ultimate that is so much a part of our culture and does unseat physics as metaphysics, and, as claimed by Lonergan, the dynamic structure of rational consciousness which we discover is not revisable, try as we might! Appreciation ever more deeply of our insatiable drive to know and to seek the good and to love, cannot but bring us to be in wonder at our human consciousness and the remarkable integration in us of all of the thrusts of emergence in our ever developing universe. Such appreciation will continually raise further questioning and response!

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References Aquinas, Saint Thomas (1963). The Summa Theologica. London: Blackfriars. D’Aquili, Eugene, and Newburg, Andrew B. (1999). The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Gregson, Vernon (Ed.) (1988). The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan. New York: Paulist Press. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. (1957). Insight: a Study of Human Understanding. New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. (1967). Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan. New York: Herder and Herder. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. (1972). Method in Theology. London: Darton Longmans & Todd. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. (1980). Understanding and Being: An Introduction and Companion to Insight. New York and Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. (1996). A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard F. J.Lonergan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lonergan, Bernard J.F. (1997). The Lonergan Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nuñez, Rafael, and Freeman, Walter J. (Ed.) (1999). Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion. Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 11/12) Tekippe, Terry T. (1996). What is Lonergan Up to in Insight? A primer. Collegewill, MN: The Liturgical Press, A Michael Glazier Book. Varela, Francisco J., and Shear, Jonathan (Ed.) (1999). The View from Within: First-person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness. Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 2/3)

One Man’s Meat Is Another Man’s Person Peter J. King

1 Dualism Real, full-blooded, substance dualism (hereafter simply ‘dualism’) – that is, the postulation of (at least) two kinds of thing, mental and physical, which interact in complex ways, and whose complex interactions are constitutive of what we call a person – is neither a common nor a popular thesis in current philosophical thought.* Why, though, has it fallen out of favour? It’s often stated, and even more often tacitly assumed, that dualism is ruled out on empirical grounds. I shall argue that there are no such grounds,† but I shall go further and suggest a way of establishing empirical grounds for dualism. I shall also briefly discuss the status of physicalist assumptions about the mind in terms of two concepts from the philosophy of science, which will result in some suggestions concerning the dualist strategy. Before I go on, however, I should say something more about what I mean by ‘dualism’. This is necessary for a number of reasons. First, dualist approaches to the mind have been for so long in such disfavour that they’re rarely discussed in detail; they’re most often encountered only in terms of a (dismis-

*

Daniel Dennett unashamedly admits that he uses ‘dualist’ as a pejorative, and many others do the same; the term ‘Cartesian’ has suffered the same fate in certain circles (see below). † John Foster offers a discussion of a priori objections to dualistic psychophysical causation (1991, pp158–185). He goes on (pp185–201) to discuss causal closure and causal overdetermination as if they constituted empirical objections; as I argue below, I disagree with his categorisation, while accepting most of his arguments.

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sive) gesture at a sketch or caricature of so-called Cartesianism.* Secondly, and connectedly, when they are discussed in any detail, this is usually in an historical context, and is confined to the attempt to get to grips with some particular dualist position, especially that of Descartes. However, there’s no more reason for a modern dualist – even a ‘Cartesian’ dualist – to follow Descartes’ metaphysics in detail than for a modern moral realist to do the same for Plato.† I said above that the dualist position with which I’m concerned here involves the existence of (at least) two kinds of thing, mental and physical, which interact in complex ways, and whose complex interactions are constitutive of what we call a person. We’re accustomed, because of Descartes, to think that these sorts of thing have completely distinct, non-overlapping essences: body is extended and therefore divisible, mind unextended and therefore indivisible; mind is thinking,‡ body not. Their relationship is traditionally also clearly circumscribed: one mind and one body (or one mode of physical substance) together interact to form one person. Bodies often exist – and can even behave in complex, purposive, apparently mind-related ways – without minds; minds can in theory exist without bodies, although we have no experience of this. The modern dualist is free to disagree with most of this. She can deny that minds are completely unextended – can, for example, hold that minds have position (my mind is here, not in the next room); she can deny that minds are indi*

I’m unhappy with the term ‘Cartesian’. It’s used to refer to a variety of positions and beliefs, many if not most of which would have been rejected by Descartes. It’s sometimes meant to refer to the beliefs of Descartes’ followers; apart from the difficulty of deciding who’s to be included in that far from select group, there are scarcely two candidates whose views are not substantially at odds. Add to all this the tendency of some modern writers to use it as little more than a pejorative, and I wonder if we shouldn’t be better off dropping it altogether. However, it’s used so widely that I’ve had to pepper the present paper with it, the alternative being a set of unwieldy paraphrases or an obscure new jargon term. † For a recent defence of Descartes’ version of dualism, see Christofidou (2001). ‡ By saying that the mind is thinking, I mean only that it’s the sort of thing that can think, or that its essential nature is thought; it’s not necessary to hold that the mind be constantly involved in ratiocination or perception or the like. One might appeal to a quasiLeibnizian account of thinking substance, and distinguish between passive and active (apperceptive) thinking substances. And one might then choose to use the word ‘mind’ only of thinking substances that do in fact actively think.

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visible (though she is, perhaps, committed to denying that the mind of a genuine, sane person be divided). She can also allow for the possibility that two minds or more be associated in the relevant way with a single body, and for a single mind to be associated with more than one body. What exactly she would say about the status of the person (or persons) or the nature of the self (or selves) in such cases isn’t obvious, and would doubtless repay careful discussion – for which this isn’t the place. Thus there’s plenty of room for disagreement within dualism, and dualists make good use of that room. In what follows, therefore, I shall use the terms ‘dualism’ and ‘dualist’ broadly, making reference to the differences between dualist positions, possible or actual, only when necessary.

2 Causes The central problem facing any contemporary dualist is that twentieth-century science denies any causal powers to unreduced phenomenal properties. (Papineau 1996, p.3)

This remark neatly represents the scientism which underlies much opposition to dualism.* It is in fact little more than an appeal to authority – though, oddly, to an authority which is essentially mutable and incomplete: contemporary science. There are, of course, times when philosophers should not only be aware of what science currently holds to be the case, but should trim their philosophical sails accordingly. The question that must be tackled before I go any further, then, is this: what current scientific grounds are there for the anti-dualist position? The focus of the rejection of dualism is usually the causal connection between mind and body, which is claimed to give rise to insurmountable problems — even to be inconceivable. Of course, if one defines causality as a physical re*

Interestingly, however, Papineau’s remark comes in a review of what’s essentially a physicalist account of the mind — that of David Chalmers. Chalmers refers to his position as dualist, but it’s at best a sort of property dualism, very far from the fullblooded dualism with which I’m concerned here.

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lation (whatever ‘physical’ means in modern science), one can simply rule out mind–body causal interaction by definition. Presumably, however, that’s not what’s intended by dualism’s opponents (whom, for ease of reference I’ll lump together under the rough and ready label physicalists*); apart from its questionbegging nature, such a response hardly involves an appeal to the empirical. The same goes for appeals to the principle of causal closure: “This is the assumption that if we trace the causal ancestry of a physical event, we need never go outside the physical domain.” (Kim 1989, p.143) This is clearly not derived empirically; rather, it’s a methodological principle adopted by physical scientists and certain philosophers, an article of the physicalist faith, part of the physicalist disciplinary matrix, to use Kuhn’s term†, or of the hard core of the physicalist research programme, to use Lakatos’s (I shall have more to say about these notions later). Without the principle of causal closure, it’s argued, we can never give a completely physical explanation of the universe — we should be reduced to a ‘Cartesian’ position, faced with a universe that was only partly explainable within our current scientific disciplinary matrices.‡ This is of course true, but we’re never told why it’s supposed to carry any weight. Why must a completely physical explanation of the universe be possible (indeed, why must any complete explanation be possible)? The enterprise of natural science certainly doesn’t depend upon such a possibility; indeed, if the dualist is right, and the universe is composed of at least two kinds of substance in causal interaction, there’s no reason why a branch of the natural sciences shouldn’t *

One occasionally encounters writers who talk in terms of giving a naturalistic account of the mind when what they clearly mean is a physicalistic account. The common (and generally question-begging) identification of ‘natural’ with ‘physical’ is one of the problems with which dualists (and conscientious non-dualists) have to deal. The same applies to the related habit of treating the natural as being constituted by the physical. † Kuhn’s account of what started as a very broad notion of paradigms was refined and modified in response to criticism (see, for example, Kuhn 1974). This isn’t the place to discuss the notion in any detail; what I have in mind with regard to physicalism in the philosophy of mind is the part of the original notion of a paradigm that Kuhn later called the disciplinary matrix — more specifically, the sort of model that provides scientists with a shared ontology. ‡ See, for example, Jaegwon Kim (below). On the scare quotes around ‘Cartesian’, see above.

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arise whose focus is the mental. (Had psychology not largely surrendered to physicalism, it might have filled such a position, and I suppose might yet do so.) One obvious focus for a natural science unconstrained by physicalist prejudice is the common assumption (see, for example, Dennett 1991, pp. 34– 35) that the complex set of interactions in the brain is causally closed – that the total quantity of energy involved in brain activity is completely accounted for by physical processes, leaving no room for any causal rôle for a non-physical mind. There are no empirical grounds for this assumption; to the best of my knowledge, no scientist has ever attempted to provide such grounds. If it were discovered that there was a mismatch between the energy in the brain and the energy accounted for by purely physical events, then dualism would have received a significant boost. It’s true, on the other hand, that a negative result would not rule out dualism, but it might force the dualist to choose between abandoning her dualism and accepting the possibility of causal overdetermination.* Jaegwon Kim offers a curious but telling account of the physicalists’ position with regard to the assumption of causal closure: Most physicalists will find the Cartesian model unacceptable if not incoherent; they accept the causal closure of the physical not only as a fundamental metaphysical doctrine but as an indispensable methodological presupposition of the physical sciences. If you reject it, you are buying into the Cartesian picture, a picture that no physicalist could tolerate. For it depicts the mental domain as an ontological equal of the physical domain; the two domains coexist side by side, causally interacting with each other, and there is no reason to call such a position physicalism rather than mentalism. (1996, pp. 147–148)

So physicalists reject the Cartesian model and accept causal closure. They accept causal closure because otherwise they’d have to accept Cartesianism – and if they accepted Cartesianism, they’d not be physicalists. Leaving aside Kim’s invalid move from the rejection of causal closure to the acceptance of *

For a discussion of causal overdetermination see, for example, Mill’s System of Logic Book III, chapter V, section 3.

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Cartesianism,* this presents the relationship between the choice of the physicalist position and the acceptance of causal closure as almost vapidly circular. John Biro presents a very similar account (though followed by a comment suggestive of a certain degree of scepticism): The simple steps and processes we seek to identify as underlying, indeed, in some sense constituting, complex intelligent behaviour are supposed to be themselves ‘dumb’, merely mechanical. This requirement springs from a metaphysical concern: it is felt that only thus will intelligent behaviour, and thus the mind, be explainable in respectably physicalistic terms, that is, as subject to the same laws as the rest of the natural world. In our day, this physicalistic assumption is not considered to be in need of defence: the [Cartesian-dualist alternative] is deemed a non-starter, incompatible with the scientific outlook. (1993, p.52)

Again, the circle isn’t very far from the surface: modern philosophers accept the physicalist assumption without question because the alternative is unscientific – i.e., non-physicalistic. Perhaps there’s a confusion between the claim that there’s empirical evidence for a close relation between mental and neurophysiological processes, and the claim that there’s empirical evidence against the distinct existence of the mental (that certainly accounts for much extra-philosophical argument against dualism.) What’s more likely, though, is that anti-dualists have in mind the sort of criticism that was offered against Descartes’ position by his opponents – criticism based upon their shared, crudely mechanical notion of efficient causation. Yet, even leaving aside the fact that neither modern science nor modern philosophy still accepts that crude concept, we should note that once again it is simply not empirical, as claimed, but philosophical. No experimental or observational evidence is offered against a causal connection between really distinct substances (what could constitute such evidence?); it’s simply claimed that a certain (theoretical) notion of causation makes mental–physical causation difficult to understand.

*

Unless ‘Cartesianism’ is being used to mean nothing more than ‘non-physicalism’ — in which case the move isn’t invalid, but is little more than tautological.

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This isn’t the place to go into the notion of causation in any depth, but it’s worth noting that W.D. Hart, in a fascinating and detailed defence of interactionist dualism, considers the implications for this issue of regularity theories of causation, and concludes that they trivialise the problem because they imply that “there is no more difficulty about brute constant conjunction between mental and physical events than between some physical events and others” (1971, p.59). He therefore looks for an account of causation that brings out the severity of the problem. I’m not convinced that the problem isn’t trivial, and that the regularity theories’ implication does not therefore count in their favour, but Hart’s preferred alternative – “Causation is energy flow” (1971, p.68) – brings out the problems inherent in most attempts to explain causation, for what is energy flow itself but a causal concept? In fact, when one looks at the work of those many philosophers who reject interactionist dualism – for example, Donald Davidson, Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, John Searle – we find that none of them offers (or, indeed, claims to offer) empirical arguments against the theory. In so far as they appeal to empirical facts at all, these are intended to back up their arguments for the truth of their own positions (and even then, against rival non-interactionist or physicalist positions rather than against dualism). The rejection of what I’ve called full-blooded dualism is in fact an assumption made by ‘cognitive scientists’, neurophysiologists, and the like, not a conclusion drawn from their work. That this isn’t noticed (or, at least, not acknowledged) by many philosophers is more than a little worrying. I’ll return to these metaphilosophical issues in the last section of this paper; for now I’d like to move on to a specific example in which the dualist option is usually simply ruled out from the beginning — an example which will lead on to my suggestion that it’s at least possible that there be some empirical grounds for accepting dualism. 3 Thought Experiments The philosophy of mind is a fertile breeding ground for the thought experiment, sending up clouds of the things like pregnant mosquitoes in a con-

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ceptual swamp. But, like mosquitoes, the thought experiment is apt to bite the hand that feeds it. If one is not scrupulously careful, an inadvertently begged question can turn an argument for one’s theory into a test of one’s underlying assumptions. The example with which I start will be familiar to most readers, and can be found in David Wiggins’ Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity; Derek Parfit’s discussion of it in his ‘Personal Identity’ is perhaps particularly well known. It’s one of many brain-transplant and brain-splitting examples made popular by a number of writers over the past couple of decades, and Parfit describes it succinctly: My brain is divided, and each half is housed in a new body. Both resulting people have my character and apparent memories of my life. (1971, p.5)

There are three possible results: that I don’t survive the operation, that I survive as only one of the two people, and that I survive as both of them. Now, as a matter of fact it’s possible to survive with only half a brain (though one’s restricted to a career in management), but for the rest we have to make a couple of assumptions. First, we have to assume that a brain can be transplanted from one human being to another, the ‘owner’ of the brain surviving the operation. Secondly, given the possibility of survival with only one brain hemisphere, and given the first assumption, it seems reasonable to assume that a semi-encephalic patient could survive if her remaining hemisphere were transplanted.* Given all this, there seems to be no obstacle to a patient’s survival if only one hemisphere of her brain were transplanted, the other being destroyed. But then there’s surely no obstacle to such a patient (call her Renée) surviving the split-brain transplant, in which the two hemispheres are trans*

Up to a point, it doesn’t really matter what new scientific discoveries are made concerning the relationship between the brain and the mind; the thought-experiment can be adjusted to allow for them. For example, brain research since Wiggins’ and Parfit’s discussions has shown the necessity of the reticular formation in the brain stem for ‘wakeful consciousness’; leaving aside a worry about the notion of ‘necessity’ in this context, there’s no principled problem here. We simply include in our thought experiment a method of duplicating or sharing out the brain stem.

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planted into different skulls. As Parfit asks: “How could a double success be a failure?” (1971, p.5); it seems unreasonable to suppose that Renée wouldn’t survive at all. Moreover, what reason could we have for claiming that Renée survived as one of the resulting people rather than the other? We needn’t even make the simplifying (and false) assumption that the two hemispheres are identical; there’s no reason to choose one as being Renée (the other being ... who?).* So that leaves only the possibility that she survive as both people (the possibility with which Parfit’s concerned). It might, of course, be objected that we need to ask various questions concerning the factual background of the thought experiment — for example, we need to know more about the actual nature of the two halves of the brain. One approach to this is typified by Dan Robinson’s argument against the production of two Renées: Since brain function is not a constant over the life of the individual and since we already know that the two hemispheres are neither symmetrical in function nor identical in, to use a less than felicitous term, content, we have no reason to expect that transplanted hemispheres will constitute transplanted identities. (1976, p.77)

Robinson’s concerned here with something like identity rather than with Parfit’s notion of survival, though I take it that he’s denying that Renée survives as either of the new people. But in any case this isn’t the sort of objection I have in mind. On the one hand, as I’ve said, I’m happy to accept all sorts of simplifying assumptions, and on the other, I’m not centrally concerned with exactly who results from the transplant. My worry centres on Wiggins’ and Parfit’s shared assumption that both of the new body–and–half-brain combinations will *

We do, however, have to make the assumption that both hemispheres are potentially persons. Various writers have argued that this isn’t the case — that the right hemisphere (in most well-lateralised adults) lacks self-consciousness, mainly on the dubious, and in any case disputed, grounds that it lacks linguistic abilities. We can either ignore this claim, account it false (my choice), or pick our experimental subjects from among “adult females, sinistrals of either [sex,] and ambidextrals”, who show “a tendency towards bilateral speech functions” (Puccetti 1976, p.66).

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be persons at all. The two writers see the only question as concerning which, if either, of those persons Renée should survive as: both, one, or neither. Of course, in so far as they’re discussing what we should say if the result of the operation were two people, then I can have no complaint (well, only a minor complaint – see below, p.7). Nevertheless, I think that it’s philosophically important to examine the status of the antecedent of that conditional, and to consider what we ought to say if it turned out to be false.

4 Developing an Empirical Experiment Let’s return to the thought experiment. Imagine that, after years of successful brain transplants and of thorough research into the physiology of the brain, medical science is ready to try the split-brain transplant. A brain is divided, and each hemisphere placed in its new body but the result isn’t two surviving persons, it’s one person and a vegetable on a life-support machine. In repeated trials, one transplanted hemisphere always produces a new person (the survivor), while the other always produces a vegetable. Exhaustive investigation in each case reveals no physical difference between the two hemispheres that could account for such a result, and there are no differences between the two parts of the operation. What’s the explanation? How could a double (physical) success result in a such a (mental) mixed bag? There’s one – and, I think, only one – satisfactory answer: each person is partly composed of a mind, whose connections with that person’s brain are intimate and strong. The act of dividing the person’s brain isn’t the act of dividing her mind; thus, at the time of division, the mind attaches itself to just one hemisphere. The experimental result points to a certain sort of dualism: it suggests that the person is composed of one mind and one body, and that both are needed for survival. I said that there’s only one satisfactory answer; that is, of course, not to say that there’s only one answer. Perhaps the mind is divisible, but merely splitting the brain fails to divide it; perhaps a person’s mental component is made up of more than one mental thing (multiple minds of some sort), but there’s a strong bond between them. And, of course, it might be that, no matter how ad-

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vanced the sciences were at the time of the experiment, physicalists would still rather appeal to the existence of a gap in their knowledge than give up their physicalism; that is, they might declare the experimental result an anomaly, and set it aside until the relevant but as yet unknown fact about the brain is discovered. None of these, nor any of the other more or less far-fetched alternatives that come to mind, is as simple or as straightforward an explanation as the one– body/one–mind dualist account (although it is, of course, possible that other empirical evidence might add weight to one or other of them). Such an experiment provides, then (allowing for the problems indicated by the simplifying assumptions), empirical evidence for dualism. It’s rather one-sided, of course, for even if dualism is the only (or at least the best) explanation of the failure of split-brain transplants, their success wouldn’t count against a dualist theory. In fact, modified success might count as evidence for a different form of dualism; for example, both halves might give us persons, only one of them being self-conscious (assuming that we allow non-self-conscious persons), or adult, or recognisably Renée. Indeed, both halves might give us what appears to be a surviving Renée, as Parfit speculates, which would be consistent with a dualism that allowed the divisibility of the mind, or that allowed a single mind to interact with two bodies, resulting in two persons, or (most bizarrely) that postulated that persons have multiple minds.* But that sort of speculation goes beyond the very limited aims I’ve set myself here.† Returning to the original Wiggins–Parfit example, it’s clear that, if we simply assume that a logically possible result of the experiment is two surviving Renées, we’re ruling out a certain dualist conception of the mind (and so to that extent I have a problem even with the moderate, conditional form of the splitbrain transplant example). If the mind is a distinct, indivisible substance, then it’s logically impossible that Renée survive as two people. On one central sort of dualist view, even if the result of the split-brain transplant is two people, only *

Another possible outcome would be that only one person is produced by the experiment except in cases involving sufferers from ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’. † One further possibility might be worth mentioning, however. Should the splitbrain operations go as I’ve suggested, and a dualist theory be accepted as a result, we might try the same experiment on animals, thus testing Descartes’ suggestion (however tentative — see, for example, AT V 277–277) that only human beings have rational souls.

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one of them can be said to be Renée’s survivor, and this view can’t be ruled out by fiat, nor by a determined refusal to consider the first-person perspective. If the sort of experiment described above were performed, and if the result were as I’ve discussed, that would constitute empirical grounds for dualism. Yet there are no reasons, either empirical or a priori, for ruling out such a result.* When philosophers do make assumptions about the outcome of such thought experiments, they risk falling into the trap that I described in section 3, above: they fail to notice that an inadvertently begged question has turned an argument for (or a statement of) their theory into a test of their underlying assumptions.

5 The Status of Physicalism I made reference in section 2 of this paper to Kuhnian disciplinary matrices and Lakatosian hard cores. Although I don’t claim to be able to apply without alteration either Kuhn’s or Lakatos’ account of science to the philosophy of mind, there’s some interest in considering the analogies. One of the differences between the two notions is that, while neither those doing Kuhn’s normal science nor those engaged in Lakatos’ research programmes question the disciplinary matrix within which they’re working or the hard core of their programme, Lakatos’ researchers make a conscious decision to accept their programme’s hard core. If they do start to question it, they’re not thereby opting out of the whole scientific enterprise, only out of that particular research programme. Such an opting out isn’t incomprehensible to those still within the programme, however much they might disagree with their erstwhile colleagues; research programmes aren’t meaning-incommensurable as Kuhn’s disciplinary matrices are supposed to be. Now, in so far as committed physicalists seem genuinely unable to comprehend the dualist position (for example, describing the dualists’ claims as “in*

Indeed, even if there were empirical grounds for rejecting dualism, that wouldn’t rule out the dualist result of the split-brain experiment; it’s hardly unknown in the sciences for there to be empirical evidence on both sides of a disagreement.

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coherent”, taking principles such as causal closure and the completeness of physics as articles of faith which they seem unable to conceive being questioned), the Kuhnian notion of a disciplinary matrix seems appropriate here. On the other hand, in so far as questioning the central tenets of physicalism doesn’t involve opting out of philosophy altogether, only out of one philosophical research programme, the Lakatosian concept seems more appropriate (unfortunately, there are physicalists who do seem to believe that those working and arguing outside their programme have something of the philosophical status of flat-Earthers or ufologists*). None of this is intended to be taken as an attack on physicalism (though it does seem to me that both Kuhnian disciplinary matrices and Lakatosian research programmes are better fitted to the sciences than to philosophy, part of whose essential nature is surely to treat as beyond question no area, no theory, no line of argument). My aim has mainly been to understand a certain sort of physicalist response to dualism. However, if there’s any truth in this way of looking at physicalism, the dualist might be able to draw certain conclusions concerning her strategy. Those physicalists who are genuinely in the grip of something like a disciplinary matrix will almost certainly not be persuadable, in the normal philosophical way, by argument. Although I don’t suggest that the dualist should stop offering arguments, what’s really needed is the sort of crisis described by Kuhn: an accumulation of anomalies, an increasing sense of unease, a return to philosophical engagement with the deeper issues, and ultimately a revolution. There are in fact signs that such a crisis is building, fuelled partly by recognition of problems centring on the phenomenology of consciousness — what it’s like to be oneself (like the poor bat i’ the adage). Transitional works have begun to appear, such as that of David Chalmers (see Chalmers 1996); he, like a number of other writers, recognises many of the problems facing physicalism, but can’t quite bring himself to give up most of the physicalist assumptions. He *

Those few philosophers who argue for dualist positions of one sort or another are generally confronted with, not calm and dispassionate philosophical argument, but high emotion. This is another indication that we are not dealing merely with a disagreement at the level of theories, but with something much deeper.

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therefore opts for an attribute dualism which is metaphysically obscure, but which has the advantage of pointing to many of the more glaring problems with physicalism proper. My hope is that the resultant shift won’t simply be to another Kuhnian-style disciplinary matrix, but will involve an opening out of the philosophy of mind to embrace all strands of genuinely philosophical thought.

Acknowledgements My thanks to Andrea Christofidou and John Foster for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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References Biro, John (1993). Hume’s New Science of the Mind. In Fate Norton, David (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 33–63 Chalmers, David J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press Christofidou, Andrea (2001). Descartes’ Dualism: Correcting Some Misconceptions. Journal of the History of Philosophy XXXIX: 215–238 Dennett, Daniel C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston MA: Little, Brown, & Co. Foster, John (1991). The Immaterial Self: A Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind. London: Routledge Foster, John (1993). Dennett’s Rejection of Dualism. Inquiry, 36:17–31 Hart, W.D. (1971). The Engines of the Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Kim, Jaegwon (1989). The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 63:31–47; references to reprint in Moser & Trout Kim, Jaegwon (1996). Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Westview Press Kuhn, Thomas S. (1974). “Second Thoughts on Paradigms”. In Kuhn, T.S. (1977). The Essential Tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Moser, Paul K. & Trout, J.D. (Eds.) (1995). Contemporary Materialism: A Reader. London: Routledge Papineau, David (1996). A Universe of Zombies? (review of Chalmers,1996). Times Literary Supplement, 21st June: 3–4 Parfit, Derek (1971). Personal Identity. Philosophical Review, LXXX:3–27

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Puccetti, Roland (1976). The Mute Self: A Reaction to Dewitt’s Alternative Account of the Split-Brain Data. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 27:65–73 Robinson, Daniel N. (1976). What Sort of Persons are Hemispheres? Another Look at ‘Split-Brain’ Man. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 27:73–78 Wiggins, David (1967). Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Consciousness and the Intentional Awareness of Instantiables Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan

1 Introduction It is commonplace to distinguish two forms of dualism with respect to the question of the mental and the physical. On the one hand, there is the view often characterized as property dualism – the view that the world contains both mental and physical properties and the former are ontologically distinct from the latter. Thus formulated, property dualism is compatible with more than one account of the nature of the particular relationship between mental and physical properties. According to one account, mental properties supervene upon physical properties. As Jaegwon Kim has more than amply demonstrated (Kim 1993), there is more than one way of explicating the nature of the supervenience relation, but what they all seem to come down to in the end can perhaps be expressed in this way: “The physical is completely in charge of the mental. Mental properties are completely causally determined by underlying subvenient physical properties.” This version of property dualism is often referred to as soft materialism and according to Kim is the prevailing view. As Kim puts it, “. . . the most widely accepted form of physicalism today combines ontological physicalism with property dualism: All concrete particulars in this world are physical, but certain complex structures and configurations of physical particles can, and sometime do, exhibit properties that are not reducible to ‘lower-level’ physical properties” (Kim 1996, p. 212). On the other hand, there seems to be no logical inconsistency inherent in accepting property dualism, but rejecting soft materialism. Thus, it seems possible to consistently assert both that mental properties and physical properties are ontologically distinct and that, at least on some occasions, mental properties causally determine physical properties.

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On the other hand, there is what is usually characterized as substance dualism – the view that the world contains two irreducibly distinct types of substances, mental substances, on the one hand, and physical substances, on the other. What does ‘substance’ mean in this context? Whatever else the term’s semantical content may include, at the very least it includes the property of being a temporal continuant with causal powers and the capacity of acquiring and losing properties. What does it mean to predicate ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ of substances in this sense? That is a difficult question, one which we shall temporarily defer. Substance dualism is customarily contrasted with substance monism, which in turn comes in at least two varieties. According to one version, all substances are physical entities. According to another, they are all mental. What is the relationship between property dualism and substance dualism? As many have argued, while substance dualism entails property dualism, property dualism does not seem to entail substance dualism. Kim has argued that property dualism is inherently unstable and that anyone starting from a position of property dualism must ultimately choose between rejecting property dualism and accepting substance physicalism, on the one hand, and accepting property dualism along with substance dualism, on the other. We shall argue that Kim fails to exhaust the alternatives. In particular, we shall argue for two versions of property dualism, versions which we shall refer to as weak property dualism and strong property dualism, respectively. In addition, we shall argue that there is also a sense in which the underlying subject of physical and mental properties is both mental and physical in nature and a sense in which it is just mental in nature. Fundamental to our argument will be an invocation of the mental power of the intentional awareness of instantiables.

2 Mental States Before engaging the merits of the question of the relationship between the mental and physical we shall first clarify the intended meanings of the primary terms of the debate, ‘mental’ and ‘physical’, as predicated of states.

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We begin with ‘mental’.* Ideally, one would like to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for predicating ‘mental’ of states and, failing that, identify at least one or more necessary conditions. But how should one go about pursuing either or both of those tasks? One reasonable method is beginning by ostension – simply itemizing at least some of the paradigmatic phenomena one deems from the very outset to be included within the extension of ‘mental states’. In that regard, we shall assume that paradigmatic instances of the category of mental states include such phenomena as sensations, perceptions, desires, emotions, thoughts, and choices. Does the world contain such phenomena? Eliminativists notoriously answer that question in the negative. We shall not argue the matter here. Suffice it to say that we take it to be as obvious as anything could possibly be that there are such events as sensing a dull aching pain in one’s left ankle, hoping for a cloudy sky for tomorrow’s muskie fishing trip, feeling depressed about one’s failure to complete the article one has been working on for over two months, thinking about what Michael Dummett said about what Frege said about sense and reference, or choosing to attend next Thursday night’s performance of Bach’s Mass in B-Minor, in spite of the fact that the performing choir would not have been one’s own first choice. Since it seems that eliminativists cannot possibly mean what they say, they must mean something else. What that something else might be is a challenging question, but not one we shall take up here. We shall also assume that the class of mental states, however defined, is, like any other class of phenomena, subject to the type-token distinction. Thus, there is a distinction between, say, the type being an experience of hoping for a recovery from one’s illness, on the one hand, and any particular instantiation of that type, on the other, say, the experience of hoping at 5:03 p.m. on November 23, 2005, for recovery from illness which a particular person had at that time. It is convenient to terminologically mark this distinction *

Perhaps a word is in order as to how we are using ‘states’ in this context. In our usage ‘states’ includes phenomena variously described as ‘events’, ‘processes’, ‘properties’, ‘acts’, ‘activities’, and ‘conditions’. Subtle distinctions can be drawn between the uses of these nouns, but they do not matter for our purposes here.

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with the contrasting noun phrases, mental-state tokens and mental-state types. Mental-state tokens are temporal occurrents, as opposed to the types of which those occurrents are instantiations. We shall focus primarily upon mentalstate tokens. Given this ostensively defined class of mental states, the question arises as to whether it is possible to identify any attribute shared by all members of the class. Without arguing the matter here, we shall assume with Searle and others that at least one such common attribute is the characteristic of consciousness. Whatever other properties mental states possess, at the very least they possess the characteristic of being conscious states. But what about the standard objection to this characterization of the mental – the objection that it cannot account for the unconscious? This is a difficult issue, one whose investigation we cannot take up here. Suffice it to say that we agree with Searle (1992, pp. 151-173) and others (e.g. Maslin 2001, p. 30) that the apparently indisputable existence of unconscious desires, emotions, choices, and beliefs can be accommodated by first invoking the property being in immediate consciousness and then expanding the semantical scope of ‘conscious’ to include the property being accessible to immediate consciousness. For example, A’s sudden and unexpected experience of severe anxiety over the possibility of missing this morning’s appointment with her supervisor because of heavy traffic is immediately present to her consciousness. In contrast, her deeply embedded anxiety about whether she has chosen the right occupation is not immediately present to her consciousness just now and, perhaps, never has been. But that subterranean anxiety is accessible to her immediate consciousness in the sense that, given certain conditions, she could become immediately aware of her anxiety. Such conditions could take an indefinitely large variety of forms, including therapeutic counselling, selfreflection, off-hand remarks made by acquaintances, and so forth. But whatever the particular vehicle of self-disclosure might turn out to be, it is possible for A to experience a “shock of recognition” in which she cognitively apprehends herself as a subject in the grip of that particular anxiety. Thus, we shall assume that a necessary condition for a state being a mental state is either being in immediate consciousness or, failing that, being

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accessible to immediate consciousness. We shall also assume that it is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of a mental state. Of course, our argument that the accessibility to immediate consciousness of unconscious mental states is sufficient to make the latter themselves conscious in a broadened sense may not persuade all readers. So, in order to lessen the impact of such an objection, we hasten to draw a distinction. One could refer to mental states which occur in immediate consciousness as Amental states and to mental states which, though unconscious, are accessible to immediate consciousness as B-mental states. The point is that nowhere in the arguments we shall present here do we appeal to B-mental states. Thus, any scepticism about our account of unconscious mental states would not, by itself, constitute a legitimate objection to those arguments. In attempting to characterize at least part of the essence of the property being a mental phenomenon we take care to avoid what we regard as a mistake – that of including ‘non-physical’ in the very definition of ‘mental’. Such definitions dictate from the outset that ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ are mutually exclusive in the sense that ‘mental’ is predicable of something if and only if ‘physical’ is not predicable of it. Such an approach biases the investigation from the outset. It may well turn out that ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ cannot be simultaneously predicated of the same things, but if it does turn out to be so, that conclusion should not be forced from the very beginning by defining ‘mental’ as ‘non-physical’. It seems preferable to begin with specifications of the meanings of ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ which leave open, at least temporarily, the further question about their compatibility.

3 Physical States The problem of defining ‘physical’ is a notoriously difficult and controversial matter. Instead of ambitiously attempting to state necessary and sufficient conditions for the attribution of ‘physical’ to a state, we shall propose five necessary conditions for being a physical state:

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(1) A state is physical only if it has a spatial location. (2) A state has a spatial location only if it has a spatial location to everything else in the universe which itself has a spatial location. (3) A state is physical only if it bears only physical relationships to other things. (4) A state which has a physical relationship to another thing has a spatial relationship to that thing. (5) A state has a spatial relationship to another thing only if that other thing itself has a spatial location. We think that these assumptions are plausible and should be granted by all physicalists. [1] would surely be conceded. It is an integral part of the physicalist’s conception of the universe as a space-time net in which everything has a spatio-temporal location. [2] seems equally plausible from a physicalist’s perspective. It is simply the articulation of what is meant by saying that something has a spatial location. [3] is also part of the physicalist’s picture. Purely physical things stand to other things only in purely physical relationships. [4] is the unpacking of at least part of what is meant by saying that something has a physical relationship to something else. [5] is equally plausible. Two things cannot have a spatial relationship to each other unless both have spatial locations themselves.

4 Arguments for Property Dualism A traditional and much-discussed argument for property dualism appeals to the very property of consciousness itself (e.g. Carruthers 1986, pp. 24-26). Here is one version: (1) If states of consciousness are physical then they have spatial locations. {Necessary condition (1) for being physical} (2) But then states of consciousness have spatial relationships to everything else in the universe which itself has a spatial location. {Neces-

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sary condition (2) for being physical} (3) But states of consciousness do not have spatial relationships to everything else in the universe which itself has a spatial location. {Premise} (4) Hence, states of consciousness do not have spatial locations. {From (3) and (2) by modus tollens} (5) Hence, states of consciousness are not physical. {From [4] and [1] by modus tollens} The argument is deductively valid. Hence, it can be justifiably rejected only by denying one of the premises. We have already argued that premises [1] and [2] are plausible. That leaves premise [3]. As has often been observed, it might well seem that [3] is false because of our seemingly commonsense intuition that our own states of consciousness occur “inside” our heads. If that intuition were true, then would not states of consciousness have spatial relationships to everything else in the universe which itself has a spatial location? After all, presumably one’s own skull has a definite spatial location to everything else in the universe which itself has a spatial location. Hence, if states of consciousness are themselves “inside” human skulls, would they not then necessarily also have such spatial relationships to everything else which itself has a spatial location? But we think that the property dualist should respond by denying that conditional. Even if there is some sense in which states of consciousness are themselves “inside” human skulls, it does not necessarily follow that states of consciousness have spatial locations to everything else inside the skull which itself has a spatial location. For example, consider that particular thought you just had about Frege. Just exactly where was it spatially located in relation to all of the particular bits of matter inside your skull? It seems that one cannot offer an intelligible answer. And it seems that the reason why is not a matter of there being some esoteric fact about one’s neurophysiological condition of which one happens to be ignorant. Rather, it seems that the explanation for one’s not knowing is that there is no fact of the matter at all. The question itself seems to presuppose some kind of fundamental metaphysical mistake, perhaps something like the mistake grounding a question like, “Alright, in which desk drawer did you put the number 7 this

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time?” Furthermore, once one realizes that one’s own states of consciousness could have no spatial location, it is but a short step to doubting the original “common sense” intuition itself, namely, that one’s own states of consciousness really do occur “inside” one’s own skull. If an entity has no spatial location, how could it literally occur inside one’s head? Although we think that this traditional argument from consciousness makes a strong case for property dualism and that there is a startling paucity of even prima facie plausible challenges to it, we choose not to elaborate it here. Rather, we shall propose for consideration what we take to be a relatively neglected type of argument for property dualism, an argument which, instead of focusing upon the property of consciousness itself, focuses upon a particular form of consciousness – the intentional awareness of instantiables. We take up this particular argument, not because we think it is entirely free of difficulties, but rather because we think it has substantial promise. Our primary objective is to set out the argument with a sufficient degree of clarity to enable readers to determine for themselves whether they deem it worthy of further consideration. By instantiables we intend to refer to entities for which it is possible to have instances. There is a grammatical criterion for identifying them: Given an arbitrarily selected entity F, ask whether it is intelligible to ask whether there is at least one F. If so, there is at least a prima facie case for regarding F as an instantiable. Whether there is a sense in which instantiables exist and, if so, precisely what that sense is, of course, an old and vexed question. Although we cannot go deeply into the issue here, we shall offer a few remarks in the hope that they will illuminate the sense in which we shall assume the existence of instantiables. Statements asserting the existence of any particular type of entity might mean an indefinite variety of things. Among the many possibilities are these: (1) Entities of that type can be thought about in the minimalist sense in which someone could answer the question “What are you thinking

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about?” by mentioning them. (2) Entities of that type can not only be invoked by being thought about, but it is not possible to think at all without invoking them. (3) Entities of that type are mind-independent in the sense that they exist independently of mental acts, states, or conditions. (4) Entities of that type have spatial locations. (5) Entities of that type have active causal powers. It seems obvious that instantiables exist in sense (1). It is surely possible to think about such things as the property being an electron, or the property being divisible by 2, or the property being a good philosopher. It also seems obvious that instantiables exist in sense (2). Not only is it possible to think about them, but it is not possible to think without them. It seems that the formulation of any act of thought whatever requires the invocation of at least one instantiable. For, it is not possible to think about anything at all without thinking of it as something. But to think of something as something is to think of it as a token of some type, that is, as an instance of an instantiable. Thus, it seems that every act of thought at least indirectly invokes at least one instantiable in this way. Of course, the instantiable might be either a one-place property (for the case in which the intended object is a single entity) or an n-place property (for the case in which the intended object is an ordered n-tuple). But this necessity of indirectly invoking instantiables with every act of thought gives rise in turn to the ever-present possibility of turning one’s cognitive attention to that instantiable which just a moment before one had indirectly invoked by an act of predication and making that instantiable the direct object of focus in a new act of thought. In this latter act of thought one will again necessarily have to indirectly invoke yet another instantiable in order to think of this new direct object as something. These points can be expressed more formally. Any act of thought whatever is linguistically expressible in the form ‘F(x)’, where ‘F’ is semantically tied to either a one-place instantiable or to an n-place instantiable and where ‘x’ is semantically tied to either a single entity or to an ordered n-tuple. In

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other words, any act of thought whatever, whether assertive or not, cognitively apprehends at least one entity as a token of some type. But every such predicated type F can itself be made a direct object of another act of thought. This new act of thought will be expressible in the form ‘G(F)’, for a new instantiable G. A final observation is that any particular mental state which directly or indirectly invokes an instantiable F is not only in a relation to F, but is in an essential relation to F. That is, the mental state would not be the mental state it is without being a state which invokes F. This seems fairly evident. For example, the mental state of thinking of one’s automobile as a 2005 Toyota is essentially tied to the instantiable being a 2005 Toyota. It would not be the mental state it is without being focused upon (either directly or indirectly) that particular instantiable. Consequently, a mental state which (directly or indirectly) invokes an instantiable F could not stand in a contingent relationship to F. Its relationship to F is part of what constitutes its very nature as a mental state. Do instantiables exist in sense (3)? That is, are they ontologically independent of mental acts, states, or conditions? We think that they are and have previously so argued (Pannier and Sullivan 2000, pp. 67-83). Of course, that claim is controversial. Many have argued otherwise. We shall not take up that debate here. Rather, in an effort to present an argument for property dualism which minimizes the number of philosophically controversial premises, we shall offer a formulation which takes no position on the issue of ontological independence. Here then is the argument for property dualism based upon the existence of mental states in which there is an intentional awareness of instantiables. We shall express it in a reductio form which proceeds from the assumption that property dualism is false, that is, which proceeds from the assumption that every mental state is identical to some physical brain state, an assumption we shall refer to as the Psycho-Neuro Identity Thesis. It is important to note that the conclusion this argument purports to establish is the negation of the proposition that every mental state is identical to some physical state. Thus, the conclusion is the proposition that not every mental state is

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identical to some physical state, i.e., that at least some mental states are not physical states. But that conclusion is weaker than the claim that Property Dualism is typically assumed to maintain, namely, that no mental states are physical states. We shall refer to this latter thesis as strong property dualism and to the former as weak property dualism.* The argument from consciousness presented earlier purports to establish a version of strong property dualism. The argument we shall present from the existence of mental states essentially involving the intentional awareness of instantiables purports to establish only a form of weak property dualism. Here is a sketch of the argument’s structure: (1) Assume that property dualism is false, i.e., assume that every mental state is Identical to some physical brain state. {Reductio premise} (2) There are mental states which are essentially related to instantiables. (either directly or indirectly, as previously argued). {Premise} (3) Let S* be such a mental state token and let I* be the instantiable to which S* is essentially related. (4) Now, S* is identical to some physical brain state, say, P*. {By premise (1)} (5) As a physical state, P* bears only physical relations to other things. {Necessary condition (3) for being physical] (6) Hence, in particular, P* has a physical relationship to I*. (7) But then P* has a spatial relationship to I*. {Necessary condition (4) for being physical} (8) But then I* has a spatial location. {Necessary condition (5) for being physical} (9) But no instantiable has a spatial location. {Premise} (10) Hence, I* has no spatial location. (11) But (8) and (10) contradict each other. *

Note, however, that even though “weak” property dualism is, by definition, not as strong as “strong” property dualism, it would be a mistake to infer that weak property dualism is in any way an insignificant thesis. After all, it is true, it establishes the very important thesis that the class of mental states is not identical to the class of physical states.

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(12) Hence, the reductio premise is false, that is, at least some mental states (namely, mental states of intentional awareness of instantiables) are not physical states (the thesis of weak property dualism). Notice that if this argument is supplemented by the argument from consciousness presented earlier, a stronger conclusion can be derived, namely, that mental states of this particular kind themselves have no spatial location. Notice also that the argument purports to refute any form of Psycho-Neuro Identity theory, including both type identity and token identity variations. As it stands, the formulation is not deductively valid, but it could be shown to be, albeit at some cost of space and intelligibility. We shall focus upon the plausibility of the premises. Presumably, one of the more controversial premises is (9), the proposition that no instantiable has a spatial location. How might it be supported? One possibility is using a Constructive Dilemma: (1) Either instantiables are mind-independent or they are not. (2) If they are mind-independent, they have no spatial location. (3) If they are mind-dependent, they have no spatial location. (4) Hence, in either case, they have no spatial location. Since the argument is deductively valid, a critic would be relegated to questioning one or more of the premises. (1) is logically true. Hence, either or both of (2) and (3) would have to bear the brunt of any criticism. What might motivate scepticism about (2)? A major basis for doubt might be the thought that the immanence theory of instantiables seems more plausible than the transcendent theory of instantiables. According to the immanence theory, instantiables are literally present in their instances, whereas according to the transcendent theory they have no spatial locations at all, much less spatial locations in their instances. Thus, the criticism would be that, even if instantiables are mind-independent, they nonetheless have spatial locations, namely, the spatial locations of their instances. The debate between these two accounts of mind-independent instantiables is another one of those large and difficult issues which we cannot adequately treat here. We shall limit ourselves to three points.

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First, as has often been argued, there seem to be instantiables whose instances do not themselves have spatial locations, e.g., numbers, functions, etc. But if so, then those instantiables themselves could not have spatial locations.* For example, consider the instantiable being a valid argument. It seems that any particular instance of that instantiable lacks a spatial location. But then the instantiable itself could not have a spatial location. Similar points could be made with respect to such instantiables such as being a recursive function, or being a transfinite ordinal. Second, it seems plausible to identify at least some members of the class of instantiables with possibilities. Consider the possibility (i.e., instantiable) being a person catching a six-pound brown trout on May 21, 2007. Suppose that when that date arrives you somehow manage to actualise that possibility. At the very least, it seems that it would be metaphysically odd to describe that situation by saying that the actualisation of that possibility is identical to the possibility itself. Rather, it would seem more appropriate to say what we have here is an actualisation of the possibility, not the possibility itself. It seems that possibilities necessarily leave the stage when their actualisations show up. Third, one of the consequences of immanence theories is the proposition that instantiables do not exist in the absence of at least one instantiation. This also seems counter-intuitive. Imagine a genetic engineer who sets out to create a type of organism which has never before existed, an organism answering to specifications F. Suppose that the specifications are internally consistent and that it is technologically possible to create organisms of type F. Suppose further that after working for a number of years the engineer abandons the project and that no one else ever takes it up again. It seems that it would be at best distinctly odd to describe this situation as one in which the instantiable being an F never existed. If it never existed, what was the genetic engineer thinking about all that time? *

This is the reason why vector processing such as is described by Paul Churchland in Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain (1996) cannot adequately account for the intentional awareness of instantiables, even conceding for the sake of argument that it can account for such activities as facial recognition.

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What about premise (3), the proposition that if instantiables are minddependent then they have no spatial locations? How might it be supported? It seems that one plausible avenue of approach would be to mimic the argument from consciousness presented earlier. Invoking an identification often put forward by proponents of mind-dependent accounts of instantiables, suppose that instantiables are identical to concepts, where the latter are taken to be mind-dependent in the same sort of way as are visual images in the imagination. Suppose that an agent is thinking about the instantiable being a valid argument. According to the theory under consideration, that instantiable is mind-dependent in just the way in which, say, an imaginative visual image of a trout taking a dry fly is mind-dependent. But even if that were true, it seems that there is no intelligible answer to the question, “But just exactly where is that concept spatially located in relation to every physical location inside the agent’s skull?” The apparent lack of a coherent response seems to provide at least some measure of support for premise (3). 5 What is the Nature of the Underlying Subject of Mental States? Assuming for the sake of discussion that some form of property dualism is true, what can be inferred about the nature of the underlying subjects of mental states? The question can be approached in stages. [1] Are mental states possessed by underlying subjects at all? Is it reasonable to believe in the existence of underlying subjects of mental states? Perhaps Hume is correct in asserting mental states do not have underlying subjects at all. Perhaps mental states are their own subjects, so to speak. But such a view does not seem compatible with the raw phenomenological facts of experience. We experience our mental states as happening to us as subjects. Schlick’s admonition that, instead of saying things like “I am feeling pain just now”, one should rather say something like “There is pain just now” seems to us wildly off the mark (Schlick 1949). Just imagine what anyone (who is not already in the grip of a Humean metaphysics) would say in response to someone who just asserted “There is pain just now”. The obvi-

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ous response would be “Who is in pain just now?” If the other party refuses to answer the question and just keeps repeating “There is pain just now”, one would presumably conclude that he was joking or, perhaps, mentally deranged. Besides being supported by the immediate data of human experience itself, the view that mental states inhere in underlying subjects persisting through time is supported by the structure of language itself. Consider words typically used to refer to mental phenomena, words such as, ‘states’, ‘properties’, ‘conditions’, ‘states of affairs’, and ‘processes’. The grammatically appropriate question with respect to the use of any of such terms is what might be called the ‘Of what?’ question: “A state of what?” “A property of what?” “A condition of what?”. Thus, the structure of language itself reveals our commonly shared conviction that our mental states are our own. They are not ontologically free-floating entities; we own them. An additional support for the view that mental states inhere in underlying subjects is provided by considering the category of powers. No individual mental state is ontologically self-originated and self-sufficient. Rather, individual mental states issue from underlying powers and capacities. Particular events of sensation issue from an underlying power of sensation. Particular acts of thinking issue from an underlying power of thinking. Particular acts of remembering issue from an underlying power of remembering. Particular acts of imagination issue from an underlying power of imagination, and so on. All this seems incontrovertible. But if so, then there must be underlying subjects in which mental states inhere. For, the suggestion that powers could ontologically ground themselves seems clearly false. Given any particular power, there must be an underlying subject whose power it is. There is a linguistic consequence of this line of thought. There are at least two ways of linguistically invoking a mental property. On the one hand, one can refer to, say, the property being a mental state of type F. On the other hand, one can refer to, say, the property being a subject which is experiencing a mental state of type F. Our line of reasoning suggests that, even though the first usage is perhaps useful in certain contexts, it is nonetheless potentially misleading. In contrast, the second usage can never mislead.

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We conclude that mental states are possessed by underlying subjects. These underlying subjects are substances in the sense we have previously specified – temporal continuants with causal powers and the capacity to acquire and lose properties. Of course, this conclusion is at odds with contemporary metaphysical denials of substance, such as so-called “temporal parts” views. This is another of those large and difficult issues meriting a comprehensive discussion in its own right, but concerning which we can only summarily mark out a position here. [2] Are physical states possessed by underlying subjects? For analogous reasons, it seems reasonable to believe that physical states are possessed by underlying subjects. Physical states, conditions, properties, processes, and states of affairs are necessarily possessed by underlying subjects which are substances in the sense we have specified – temporal continuants with causal powers and the capacity to acquire and lose properties. [3] Assuming that both mental and physical states are possessed by underlying subjects, are they possessed by the same underlying subjects in each case? This is yet another traditionally vexed question. According to one traditional response – substance dualism – the answer is negative. All of an individual’s mental states are possessed by an underlying mental substance (a “mind”) and all of her physical states are possessed by an underlying physical substance (a “body”). But one of the persistent causes of scepticism about this classical response is its apparent failure to do justice to the phenomenological fact that we seem to experience ourselves as unified subjects. That is, it seems that, as a matter of the raw data of subjective experience, the “I” which is the subject of one’s mental states is the very same “I” which functions as the subject of one’s physical states. Compare the question “Whose pain is it?” with the question “Whose foot is it?” It seems that the best answer is the commonsense answer – “Mine”, as uttered by some particular individual. And whoever that individual turns out to be, she would surely not be inclined to concede that she has just equivocated on “Mine”. Thus, even if she did concede

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for the sake of discussion that there is some sense in which her foot belongs to her body, she would presumably hasten to add that her body in turn is hers. In general, it seems that there is something inherently misguided about the very question “Am I identical to my body?” The question seems to presuppose that a human body is a substance, ontologically complete and independent in itself. But that is certainly not obvious. Perhaps Aristotle is correct in maintaining that human bodies (or any organic bodies, for that matter) are intrinsically incomplete and incapable of existence in their own right. If so, any formulation of the mind-body issue which presupposes that the body is somehow already a substance in itself appears to beg the question at hand. We do not maintain that this objection from the data of immediate experience is philosophically decisive. But we do think that what appear to be obvious data of immediate experience are prima facie deserving of firm belief and can be justifiably set aside only upon the strongest of philosophical or scientific considerations. With respect to the question “How many subjects are there?” we think that the answer suggested by immediate experience is “Just one” and that no considerations have been marshalled against that answer which come close to overriding its prima facie epistemological advantage.* [4] If there is just one underlying subject of both mental and physical states, what is its ultimate nature? Assuming that some form of property dualism has been at least prima facie adequately established, what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of the underlying subject of mental and physical states? As difficult as are the previous questions we have discussed, we regard this issue as even more difficult. Accordingly, the arguments we put forward here should be understood as being proposed in an even more tentative spirit than were their predecessors. Abstractly considered, it seems that there are just four possible answers to the question. The underlying subject is either (1) exclusively mental, (2) exclusively physical, (3) both mental and physical, or (4) neither mental nor *

However, we do remain open to the kinds of argument about duality of mind proposed by the neurosurgeon Joseph Bogan.

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physical. But the question itself is unclear. In order to competently evaluate these alternatives, we must first get clear about how ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ are being used in this context. We have earlier articulated the senses of ‘mental’ and ‘physical’, as predicated of states. But what does it mean to predicate ‘mental’ or ‘physical’ of the underlying subjects of mental and physical states? It seems that there are at least two possible approaches. We begin with an obvious candidate for the intended senses of ‘mental’ and ‘physical’, as applied to the underlying subjects. One might say that the underlying substance is mental if it possesses a power or capacity to have mental states and that it is physical if it possesses a power or capacity to have physical states. According to this approach, the underlying subject of mental and physical states would itself be both mental and physical, assuming that our earlier contentions are true. But it might seem that this conclusion would not trouble those physicalists who are property dualists. Granted, they might quibble about this particular use of ‘mental’, but it seems that in the end they might well say, “Well, if that’s all you mean by ‘mental subject’, go right ahead. You can have that use of ‘mental’. But you must realize that it is perfectly compatible with the proposition that the underlying subject is ultimately physical.” But what if we push the proposed line of thought a little further? In exactly what sense could the underlying subject by purely physical if it has such an astounding power – the power to have intentional mental states in which instantiables are consciously apprehended? It seems to us that one should probably rather conclude that no substance with a capacity like that could be completely physical. However, anyone who is inclined to draw this latter conclusion is obligated to specify a sense of ‘physical’ in which the underlying subject possessing the power to intentionally apprehend instantiables could not be completely physical in that sense. What would “purely physical” mean here? We suggest that it would mean something like “composed entirely of material entities in the sense of physics, e.g., atoms, molecules, chemical compounds, etc.” Given that presupposed sense, it seems that one could once again justifiably conclude that the underlying subject is both mental and physical, but

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this time in a much stronger sense of ‘both’ than was previously invoked – a sense which should trouble those physicalists who are also property dualists. Why should it trouble them? Because, at least in our view, no physicalist account has succeeded in explaining how a purely physical subject, in this strong sense of ‘physical’, could have the power of consciously apprehending instantiables. There is yet another possible approach to specifying the meaning of ‘mental’ and ‘physical’, as applied to the underlying subject of mental and physical states. One might begin by proposing that to predicate ‘mental’ or ‘physical’ of the underlying subject of mental and physical states is simply to assert what is asserted in predicating ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ of the mental and physical states themselves. Recall that we earlier said that mental states are states which are either in immediate consciousness or accessible to immediate consciousness and that we also set out five necessary conditions for a state to be a physical state. Thus, if we were to follow this approach we would presumably have to say that to predicate ‘mental’ of the underlying subject is to assert that it is either in immediate consciousness or accessible to immediate consciousness. Similarly, we would have to say that to predicate ‘physical’ of an underlying subject is to assert that it satisfies the five necessary conditions for being a physical state we set out earlier. This approach seems to work pretty well for the case of ‘physical’. One would simply say that a substance is physical only if it satisfies the five necessary conditions outlined earlier, only now understood as applying to substances rather than to states. But there is a difficulty for the case of ‘mental’. In explaining what we meant to say in predicating ‘mental’ of states we did not intend to say that the states themselves somehow possess the property being entities which are conscious, but rather that they have the property being something which is either in immediate consciousness or accessible to immediate consciousness. In effect, we distinguished between consciousness itself, understood as a source of consciousness, on the one hand, and those states which are either in or accessible to that source, on the other. One of the semantical difficulties in this regard is that ‘consciousness’ can be used either to refer to the things which are

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“in” consciousness, on the one hand, or to that source of consciousness “in” which those things “are”. The consequence is that we would be obliged to modify our initial specification of what it means to predicate ‘mental’ of states in order to work out an intelligible account of what it means to predicate ‘mental’ of the underlying subject itself. What would such a modification be? We suggest this: The underlying subject is mental if it is a source of consciousness. What would be the result of using this approach in the project of specifying the intended senses of ‘mental’ and ‘physical’, as applied to the underlying subject? Presumably, the conclusion would be the proposition that (1) to predicate ‘mental’ of the underlying subject of mental and physical states is at least to assert that the underlying subject is a source of consciousness and that (2) to predicate ‘physical’ of the underlying subject is at least to assert that it satisfies the five necessary conditions for being a physical substance. What would be the consequences for our initial set of possibilities for the ultimate nature of the underlying subject: (1) exclusively mental, (2) exclusively physical, (3) both mental and physical, and (4) neither mental or physical? It depends. It seems that if one were to conclude that, whatever else the underlying subject is, it is at the very least a source of consciousness, then the fourth alternative would be excluded. What about the third? It seems that the answer would depend upon whether the property being a source of consciousness is compatible with the property being a physical substance, as that property is explicated in terms of the five necessary conditions for being a physical substance. If the answer is ‘No’, then the third alternative would be excluded, and along with it, the second alternative as well. That would leave just the first alternative – the underlying subject is mental. Why might one be inclined to maintain that those two properties are mutually incompatible? One might be persuaded by an argument such as this: (1) Let C* be a source of consciousness and S* a mental-state token in which C* intentionally apprehends an instantiable I*. (2) Assume that C* is a physical substance. {Reductio premise}

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(3) Then C* has a spatial location. {Necessary condition (1) for being a physical substance} (4) Then C* bears only physical relations to other things. {Necessary condition (3) for being a physical substance} (5) Then C* bears only spatial relations to other things. {Necessary condition (4) for being a physical substance} (6) Then C* bears a spatial relation to S*. (7) Then S* has a spatial location. {Necessary condition (5) for being a physical substance} (8) But S* does not have a spatial location. {Invoking the argument from consciousness itself} (9) Hence, C* itself does not have a spatial location. {Necessary condition (5) for being a physical substance} (10) But then C* is not a physical substance. {Necessary condition (1) for being a physical substance} The first thing to note about this argument is that it depends (at [8]) upon the argument for strong property dualism we offered earlier (the argument from consciousness itself). Thus, its assumptions exceed the capacity of the argument we offered for weak property dualism. The second thing to note is that this argument purports to show that the underlying subject of both mental and physical states is not itself a physical entity. It is also presumably a mental entity, given our definitional assumption that a substance is a mental substance if it is a source of consciousness. So, what are the results of our two approaches to the question about the nature of the underlying subject of mental and physical states? It seems that according to the first approach the underlying subject is both mental and physical in a strong sense, namely, that the underlying subject cannot be wholly physical. And it seems that according to the second approach the underlying subject is mental, but not physical. At first glance, these results seem incompatible. But are they really? We tentatively suggest that they are not necessarily incompatible, at least provided that each is understood in a certain way.

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Consider first the second result (that the underlying subject is mental, but not physical). This claim need not be understood as advancing any form of classical idealism. After all, according to the second approach physical states genuinely exist and the underlying subject genuinely possesses physical states. There is no suggestion that the physical realm is somehow an illusion or “really just mental”. The basic conception is that the ultimate subject is an immaterial causal source of power and activity which manifests itself both in the mode of mental states and in the mode of physical states. The Aristotelian tradition characterizes such entities as forms, causally active immaterial sources of both mental and physical energy which serve to unify matter in a structurally organized ways which persist through time. Note especially that it is a mistake to assume that the Aristotelian conception of active form necessarily leads to any form of substance dualism. One must remember that according to that tradition the “body” is not in itself an individual substance. There is only one substance – the embodied form. If the result of the second approach is understood from this Aristotelian perspective, then the way seems clear to reconciling the second approach with the first approach, according to which the underlying subject is both mental and physical. Two points can be made in this regard. First, the sense in which the underlying subject is both mental and physical is that it possesses both the power to have mental states and the power to have physical states. That conclusion seems compatible with the second approach. The Aristotelian unifying form also possesses both powers. Second, according to the first approach there is a sense in which the underlying subject is not physical through and through. That conclusion is also compatible with the second approach. Being immaterial, an Aristotelian unifying form is, a fortiori, not physical “through and through”. Thus, it seems that the two approaches can be reconciled. In summation, we think that the Aristotelian conception of unifying form holds great promise for resolving the mind-body problem. What we have offered in this last section is only a very inadequate sketch of its potential, a sketch at least some of whose details we hope to later supply.

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References Carruthers, Peter (1986). Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the Philosophy of Mind. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kim, Jaegwon (1993). Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kim, Jaegwon (1996) Philosophy of Mind. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Maslin, K.T. (2001). An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press. Panier, R. and Sullivan, T. (2000). The Mind-Maker. In: Varghese, Roy Abraham (Ed.) Theos, Anthropos, Christos: A Compendium of Modern Philosophical Theology. New York: Peter Lang. Searle, John (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Varghese, Roy Abraham (Ed.) (2000). Theos, Anthropos, Christos: A Compendium of Modern Philosophical Theology. New York: Peter Lang.

Mental Monism Considered as a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem Peter B. Lloyd

Consciousness has resisted conventional scientific attempts to explain it and, in the vacuum left by the absence of a scientific theory of consciousness, several metaphysical theories are in circulation. They fall into the three broad categories of physical monism, mental monism, and mental-physical dualism. This paper examines the second of these: mental monism (also called ‘subjective idealism’), which is the theory that the conscious mental world is the primary reality, and that the physical world is a construct derived from it. The eighteenth-century philosopher George Berkeley was its clearest and bestknown advocate in the West (Berkeley 1710). As this theory is diametrically opposed to the orthodox worldview of modern Western philosophy and science, it is appropriate to begin this paper by justifying even looking at this theory at all. I will differentiate this theory of mental monism from a more popular theory that sometimes passes under a similar description. Certain interpretations of quantum measurement (following von Neumann 1932) assign a key role to ‘consciousness’, although quantum mechanics itself makes no mention of consciousness. In particular, some physicists (e.g. Wolf 1984, Goswami 1993) assign so radical a role to ‘consciousness’ that they claim to be idealists. But their concept of ‘consciousness’ is essentially that of quantum observation. In contrast, I am using the concept of ‘consciousness’ as it is employed by Chalmers (1996b) – essentially that of first-person qualitative experience. I assume that androids that lacked Chalmers-type consciousness could nonetheless carry out quantum measurements and therefore possess Goswami-type consciousness. Therefore the theory that I present here is unrelated to what might be called ‘quantum consciousness’. Additionally, I

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would differentiate the advocates of ‘quantum consciousness’ from others such as Henry (2005) who advocate mental monism in Chalmers’ sense of consciousness but who nonetheless see quantum mechanics as a psychological tool in undermining a naïve belief in the external reality of a material world. 1 Respectability Arguments 1.1 Logical Respectability Although the mind-body problem has received more intensive philosophical and scientific attention recently, after being renamed and made popular by David Chalmers as the ‘Hard Problem of consciousness’ (Chalmers 1996a, p 5; 1996b, p xiii), a generally agreed solution remains out of sight. Such intractable problems are often badly formulated problems, which stem from incorrect assumptions. So, let us examine the central assumption of the mindbody problem and ask: (a) what would become of the problem if we were to relax that assumption? and (b) what grounds are there for believing the assumption? If relaxing the assumption will solve the problem, and if the grounds for making the assumption are not logically compelling, then it is legitimate to investigate that approach. (What I mean by a ‘logically compelling’ assumption is one whose denial would involve self-contradiction.) Moreover, for the sake of completeness, we are obliged to investigate it. Now, the key assumption in the mind-body problem is this: we have bodies, and our minds are dependent for their existence on our bodies – and the problem is to understand that dependence. For this exercise, therefore, let us suppose that we do not, in fact, have bodies and that, in consequence, the conscious mind can exist by itself without any physical support. (a) What happens to the mind-body problem? Clearly, it dissolves. (b) Are the grounds for believing that we have bodies logically compelling? No, for it is logically possible that one’s whole life is a dream. Therefore we have established a justification for investigating mental monism as an approach to the mind-body problem. Needless to say, this is not an argument for mental monism as such,

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nor even for the plausibility of mental monism. It is an argument with an almost vanishingly small, but nonetheless necessary, objective: it merely shows us that mental monism cannot be dismissed out of hand, and we have an obligation to assess it. 1.2 Conceptual Respectability You probably have a firm and lifelong belief in physical reality, among the background assumptions that you never seriously question. You probably believe that the real world is largely, or wholly, physical and that you have a material body with which you interact in that world. When you read a paper in an academic publication, you naturally bring all those background assumptions with you, and expect the author to have the same ones in her background. If the author abruptly makes assertions that contradict those background assumptions, it can be confusing. Therefore, I will clarify my departure from one of those normal background assumptions, by using some philosophical thought-experiments, extrapolating from familiar situations. 1.3 Extrapolations Consider dreams that are experienced during sleep. You find yourself in a world similar to the waking world, a three-dimensional space, surrounded by objects and people, and kept on the ground by gravity. You have a body in this world – at least, a notional point in space where your dreamed perceptions of vision, hearing, and touch are located. The dreamed objects will exhibit resistance to movement when pushed against, and can support the weight of your dreamed body. For instance, you might have a dream in which you climb concrete steps, and feel their rough surface and feel your body weight rising step by step. Nevertheless, that space and all the objects and bodies in it do not exist. We may say that they are delusory. While you are dreaming, you are having real conscious experiences that you construe as being produced by a physical world in which you are immersed. Yet that construal is false. That world does not exist.

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I will now suggest three ways in which we can stretch our normal idea of a dream. First, a dream typically lasts for less than an hour. But, as a philosophical exercise, we can imagine a dream lasting for much longer: for a day, or a month, or a lifetime. Second, a dream is often narratively inconsistent — a living room might suddenly become a swimming pool, for instance. Nevertheless, lucid dreaming can establish greater degrees of coherence. Again, as a philosophical exercise, we can imagine a dream as consistent and reliable as our waking experience, even if it spans a long time, as much as a lifetime. Third, it is not uncommon to have dreams within dreams, and to dream that one has woken up. We can therefore imagine a long dream in which the dreamer repeatedly dreams that she falls asleep, and dreams, and wakes up. Putting these three extrapolations together, we can imagine a dream that is indistinguishable from normal waking life. Therefore, it is logically permissible to consider the hypothesis, again as a formal philosophical exercise, that your whole waking life is a dream. I am not saying that this is at all likely, or that there is anything to be gained by believing your life is a dream. I am merely noting that it would be logically coherent to have this belief, and the implications of its being logically coherent are interesting. In fact, we have nowadays a better analogy than dreaming. For, dreaming as we know it is linked to a material brain, and uses imagery that has been gathered during the previous day from normal bodily perceptions. A congenitally blind person does not have visual content in her dreams; and if you anaesthetise a sleeper then she no longer dreams. A better analogy is a virtualreality computer system. This involves goggles displaying pictures of an imaginary three-dimensional world, and a device such as a joystick or pressure-sensitive gloves, for moving one’s avatar inside the virtual world. The appearance of this virtual world is, of course, conveyed entirely through one’s sense organs by means of goggles and earphones. As a philosophical exercise, however, we can extrapolate the technology into the future and consider systems that interface directly with the nervous system. This idea has, incidentally, received popular attention in the science-fiction films The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski 1999) and eXistenZ (Cronenberg 1999), the former being examined by Lloyd (2003). Likewise we can imagine a computer so

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powerful that it can deliver a comprehensive manifold of artificial signals, creating in the percipient’s mind a realistic simulacrum of ordinary life. Again, we arrive at the logical possibility that one’s whole life could be a computer-generated virtual reality. Whereas a dream has certain connotations, such as that it takes place for short periods of sleep, a virtual reality has no such traditional associations. Indeed, it is logically possible to imagine that you have no brain, as your ‘brain’ in this virtual reality is only a virtual object in the virtual world. It is a virtual brain. You have no access to information about what substrate, if any, your mind is embodied in. For instance, one can imagine a sciencefiction scenario in which a human mind is created and sustained in a virtual reality entirely within the memory of an advanced computer, without any biological tissue. Taking this extrapolation to its furthest extreme, we can frame the hypothesis that there is no physical universe at all, and that one’s mind is created and sustained in a virtual reality driven by a purely mental computer. This is, at least, a comprehensible hypothesis in so far as it does not involve self-contradiction. And this is mental monism. The difficulties that stem from taking this perspective seriously are very considerable, but I shall argue that they are soluble. Some of the most prominent problems are misconceptions of it that come from the sheer novelty of this perspective. I shall address two of those misconceptions in the remainder of this preliminary part of the paper – namely that mental monism is pragmatically untenable, and that it can be refuted by reaching out and touching the solid physical world. First, though, we need to do the following preparatory work. 1.4 Hierarchical Language-Games The word “real” has several meanings, which are used in different circumstances. Hence, an unqualified assertion that the mental world is ‘real’, whereas the physical world is ‘unreal’, is ambiguous. I propose to articulate these different senses of ‘reality’ by borrowing a term from Wittgenstein, and describing our use of language in terms of ‘language-games’. This is a neces-

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sary preliminary to making an unambiguous statement and defence of mental monism. The term ‘language-game’ was introduced by Wittgenstein (1953), to denote a rule-bound pattern of social activity in which linguistic utterances interact with a wider range of actions. His point in introducing the term was to move away from a naïve Lockean view of words as tags and towards a perspective on an integrated system of language and behaviour. So, a word is no longer considered as having a single fixed meaning but as having different roles in different language-games. Wittgenstein gives the analogy of the levers of a steam engine, which look and feel the same (because they are designed to be handled) but perform different functions. Likewise, words might share the same look-and-feel but play roles of different kinds. In this essay, the main burden of the concept of language-games is to differentiate the roles played by terms of two particular classes: ‘physical’ terms and ‘mental’ terms. For instance, the preposition ‘in’ has the same look-and-feel in such sentences as these: “I have some food in my stomach” and “I have a pain in my stomach”. But the meaning of ‘in’ is fundamentally different: in the first case, it denotes the spatial containment of an object; in the other, it denotes a psychophysical correlation. Nevertheless, that difference is obscured by the common linguistic appearance, and we may be led into the naïve belief that, in this example, the pain is physically located in the stomach. Let us consider a more interesting case. According to Tarski’s famous definition of truth, a statement such as “I am sitting in a noodle bar” is true if I am sitting in the noodle bar. Now, consider, on the one hand, sitting in a noodle bar in the physical world and, on the other hand, sitting in a virtual noodle bar in a computer-generated virtual world (such as in the Wachowskis’ film The Matrix). In both cases you can truthfully say, “I am sitting in a noodle bar”. So, what meaning is actually conveyed by that statement, and what does it refer to? The truth-conditions of the two utterances are, in fact, mutually exclusive: if I am sitting in the physical noodle bar, then I am not wired into the virtual world and therefore I cannot be sitting in the virtual noodle bar; and vice versa. But the immediate truth-tests are identical: I look around and see the tables and chairs, and the bowl of noodles, and I smell and taste the noodles; if I telephone my friend and ask her to join me, she will

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have sensory impressions consistent with mine. Therefore, when my friend asks “Are you in the noodle bar?” and I say “Yes”, the information I actually convey is about my sensory impressions, not about the unobserved putative substrate. So, as a matter of empirical fact, the meaning that is intended to be conveyed by the utterance is not the set of truth-conditions but rather the set of truth-tests. This is a crucial point, which academic philosophy systematically neglects. In this connection, we have two different language-games: in the physical language-game, statements refer to truth-tests within the physical world; in the other, they refer to truth-tests within the virtual world. The same sentence belongs to one or the other language-game according to whether the statement is uttered in the physical or virtual world. In both cases, the truthtests are the same, but the tests are carried out in different situations. That, however, is not the bottom of the matter. For, if my friend and I are acquainted with both worlds and can move between them, then when I invite her to join me, she may ask, “Which noodle bar? The real one or the virtual one?” We see that the two language-games are not on an equal footing, as the virtual language-game is subordinate to the physical one. This subordination consists in the fact that the results of truth-tests of the virtual language-game are logically supported (to use Foster’s term) by facts within the domain of the physical language-game; and not vice versa. The contents of the computer database define the truth or falsity of statements within the virtual languagegame, but those contents are facts within the physical world. Thus my being in the virtual noodle bar is a fact in the virtual world, but it rests on data that have been populated in a physical computer; and those data are physical facts. Consequently, in the superordinate language-game (in this case, the physical one), the world denoted by the subordinate language-game (in this case, the virtual one) is a construct – or, to put it bluntly, a fiction. Let us pause to recapitulate. First, a given sentence may entail fixed truth-tests but also entail multiple different truth-conditions that depend on which language-game it is uttered in. Second, if one language-game is subordinate to another (in the above sense) then the truth-conditions of statements in the subordinate language-game are constructs or fictions that are logically

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supported by facts in the more fundamental language-game. This conclusion is pivotal to removing a common misconception – namely, that mental monism is pragmatically refutable since it requires disbelief in the necessities of everyday life. How, for example, can I write this essay on mental monism if I believe that this laptop does not exist? The answer is that (a) in the physical language-game, the laptop can be said to exist; but (b) in the mental languagegame, the laptop can be said to be a fiction, and (c) the physical languagegame is subordinate to the mental language-game. The ‘mental languagegame’ is the phenomenological language in which we report our conscious experiences. The physical language-game is subordinate to the mental language-game in so far as the results of truth-tests of physical statements are supported by facts in the mental world. For example, a truth-test for the (physical) statement that there is a potential difference of 1.5 volts between the terminals of the battery in this laptop would involve reading a voltmeter; but my consciously seeing a reading of 1.5 volts is a fact in the mental world, which is articulated in the mental language-game. It is in precisely this sense that all physical truth-tests are supported by mental facts; and that the physical language-game is therefore subordinate to the mental language-game. With that distinction of language-games in mind, we can now dispel the apparent central contradiction of Berkeleianism. According to mental monism, it is true that (p) the laptop on which I am writing is real, but on the other hand, it is also true that (q) the laptop on which I am writing is a fiction. The proviso is that the sentence (p) is taken in the physical language-game, and the sentence (q) is taken in the mental language-game. This is a distinction of precisely the same kind as the one we make when talking in virtual realities, which allows us to make the true statement (r) I am in the noodle bar (in the virtual language-game), and (s) I am not in the noodle bar but wired into a virtual reality (in the physical language-game). Separating the language-games obviates the self-contradiction that is imputed to Berkeley’s philosophy. Berkeley himself did not have Wittgenstein’s idea of a ‘languagegame’, but he did employ the corresponding idea of ‘vulgar usage’ and ‘learned usage’. This was ignored by generations of critics who asserted that mental monism, whilst it may be logically irrefutable, is pragmatically unten-

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able. For how can a mental monist buy the groceries if she denies the existence of both shops and groceries? Berkeley’s answer is that, in the ‘vulgar usage’ (or the ‘physical language-game’), it is correct to assert the existence of the shops, whilst in the ‘learned usage’ (or ‘mental language-game’) it is correct to deny their existence. This is not relativism. The physical language-game is subordinate to the mental language-game, because the truth-tests for the physical language-game are mental facts that can be stated in the mental language-game. Hence we may say (according to mental monism), the shop does not ‘really’ exist, although we go about everyday life as if we believed it did. 1.5 Comprehensiveness There is an historical anecdote in which Berkeley visited his friend Jonathan Swift, only to have the door slammed in his face and to be told that, if the good Bishop was right in his denying the existence of the door then it could not bar his entry into the house. This implies that Swift thought that Berkeley’s theory of immaterialism applied only to doors and not to human bodies, a notion whose illogicality is apparent as soon as it is stated. In fact, neither door nor body exist in the mental language-game whilst both exist in the physical language-game. If Berkeley were to make the volitional efforts that would conventionally be described as trying to walk through the door, then he would experience in his mind a characteristic pattern of resistance to his movements. Precisely an analogous situation would exist if, in a dream, Berkeley were to try to propel his dream body through a dream door. There is another historical anecdote relevant here ― that Samuel Johnson, when he was asked for his response to Berkeley’s immaterialism, gave a nearby rock a hard kick and said “I refute it thus”. This implies that Johnson thought that tactile perceptions gave him a direct connection with the material substrate. In fact, as Berkeley took pains to assert, tactile sensations exist within the conscious mind just as much as any sensation in any other faculty. Both these instances illustrate misconceptions of Berkeley’s philosophy that stem from supposing that mental monism is less than comprehensive.

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1.6 Motivational Respectability Mental monism is widely dismissed on the grounds that physical science has been overwhelmingly successful in accounting for the observed workings of the world, and its track record promises to deliver a comprehensive explanatory account of consciousness in due course. This has been called ‘promissory physicalism’. The most visible counter-argument against promissory physicalism is its failure so far to make any progress in the mind-body problem. Despite three centuries of philosophical effort since Descartes first clearly stated the mind-body problem, despite the gains in brain science over the past century, and despite the efforts of consciousness researchers over the past decade (as measured, say, by the Journal of Consciousness Studies), the mind-body problem has not moved out of the philosophical arena into the scientific arena. It is still a philosophical problem, stated in terms that lie outside the physico-scientific vocabulary. At the basic level of designating the raw data of consciousness, namely conscious experiences themselves, we do not have physically defined terms. This places the mind-body problem in a different order from other hard scientific questions such as the nature of life, how gravity works, or how quantum mechanics works. In other such problems, the raw data on which the problem rests – such as reproduction and respiration in living organisms – are defined physically. There is something there for the physico-scientific investigators to formulate hypotheses about. Even early theories of life, involving ‘vital forces’, started from physical data. Likewise, the observable facts of gravitational attraction, or quantum-mechanical phenomena, are defined in physical terms. In all those problems, it is plausible that the physico-scientific method will ultimately achieve a comprehensive explanation, or at least asymptotically approach a comprehensive explanation. That plausibility is absent from the mind-body problem because it is not even defined in physical terms. We cannot even make the first hypothesis and kickstart the cycle of hypothesis and experiment, as the problem lies outside what can be addressed in physico-scientific hypotheses. Conscious content is known by immediate private experience, and not by public physical observation where it could be referenced by the third-person language of physical

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science. In short, promissory physicalism cannot deliver a solution because the mind-body problem is not a physically defined problem. Before the scientific investigation of the mind-body relationship can begin, there is a preliminary problem that needs to be solved, and that problem is a philosophical one. Since the problem is therefore necessarily outside the scope of the physico-scientific approach, we are bound to examine alternative approaches. The one such approach that would at once solve the mindbody problem is that of mental monism. This, therefore, provides the motivation to examine mental monism. 1.7 Summary I have argued that mental monism should not be dismissed out of hand. It should be assessed on its merits, and in fact we are obliged to examine it for the completeness of the foundations of consciousness studies. I have argued for the respectability of mental monism in the following regards. (a) It is logically respectable as it is not self-contradictory and, if true, would solve the mind-body problem. (b) It is conceptually respectable as the world envisaged in mental monism is a consistent extrapolation of such familiar things as dreams and virtual realities. (c) It is motivationally respectable, as the most popular alternative to it, namely physical monism, cannot genuinely address the problem as it is not defined in physical terms.

2 Argument for Mental Monism Having established that we ought to assess mental monism, let us now do so. The principal argument in its favour was first presented by George Berkeley in 1710, and it is generally known as Berkeley’s semantic argument. This argument can be summarised briefly, as follows. Terms that denote conscious experiences are grounded by private ostensive definition, and thereby acquire a real semantic reference. In contrast, terms that denote physical things are defined analytically, and thereby are limited to a formal meaning

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within a closed linguistic system. In consequence, physical things cannot really exist but are only formal constructs; whereas the contents of conscious experience are indubitably real. The remainder of this section will unpack this tersely stated argument. An instinctive reaction from anyone who has a scientific background is to dismiss any such semantic argument as mere chicanery. Surely the mental monists cannot hope to make the solid, material world disappear by a verbal sleight of hand? The mental monists’ answer is that the supposed solidity of the material world is itself an illusion, conjured up by a verbal sleight of hand that has been perpetrated for centuries by the materialists. 2.1 Mental and Physical Language-Games For Berkeleianism to make sense, it must be built upon the demarcation between mental and physical language-games. This foundation needs to be laid out before we can build the super-structure of Berkeley’s semantic argument. This framework is usually omitted by the few philosophers who defend mental monism, who consequently leave themselves open to the sort of ridicule by which Geoffrey Warnock (1953) damned Berkeley for a generation. The idea of language-games is somewhat artificial, in so far as our real-life use of language involves sliding seamlessly between different languagegames, making utterances in more than one language-game at the same time, and being unclear about which language-game we are using. Making headway in the mind-body problem requires that we pick apart the tangle of languagegames, with more rigour than would be needed in everyday life. Let us consider some comparatively simple term that is commonly used to denote a conscious sensation. With apologies to visually impaired readers, I shall choose red. If you are unable to see red, please substitute some other sensation, such as the sound of a whistle. The word “red” is used in three basic ways: (a) to denote a class of conscious sensations; (b) to denote a section of the electromagnetic spectrum;

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(c) to denote a propensity of physical objects to reflect light in that part of the spectrum. It can also be used, and most of the time in everyday life is used, to denote all three indiscriminately. Nonetheless, each of the three basic uses is also employed on its own in specialised language-games. (a) Artists discussing the colours to be seen in a particular scene and asking themselves which paints can capture the appearance will use the word “red” to refer to just the conscious sensation of red. So will dream analysts describing the colours they saw in their dreams whilst asleep. (b) An astronomer talking about red shift uses the same word exclusively to denote the electromagnetic radiation, and his statements would have the same meaning if no conscious being ever saw red – just as he talks about ultraviolet light. (c) A process engineer discussing how much red paint a factory produces in a day would use the word “red” to refer only to the reflective properties of the paint. For him, the word would convey the same meaning in a universe with no conscious beings and (per impossible) no light. Language-games of type (a) I shall call ‘mental’, in contrast with those of types (b) and (c), which are ‘physical’. Some philosophers dispute that mental language-games exist in our pre-philosophical use of language, but their existence is demonstrated by the above examples. All three of these language-games (a) to (c) are pre-philosophical, in the sense that they arose in everyday life, and that is where they serve a useful role in conveying ideas and information. 2.2 Private Ostensive Definition of Mental Terms So, let us consider the word “red” as it is used in the mental languagegames, that is, those of type (a). How do you know what the word “red” means in those contexts? The common-sense view, which I shall be defending, is that you associate meaning with terms that denote conscious experiences by (i) having the experience in question, and (ii) mentally associating the word with the experience, or with a class of such experiences. For example, if I go to a paint shop to find out what a colour such as ‘Tapestry Red’ is,

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then I look at the colour sample (Colour Council No. 12) and make a mental note, which might be articulated as, “That is Tapestry Red”. This is a ‘private ostensive definition’. It is ‘private’ (as opposed to ‘public’) because it takes place inside my conscious mind and is not amenable to scrutiny by third parties. It is ‘ostensive’ (as opposed to ‘analytic’) because the colour in question is fixed by mentally attending to it – figuratively speaking, I am pointing to the colour experience with my mind. It is not necessary that you should make a literal declaration (“That is Tapestry Red”) or deliberately intend to memorise the colour. I might merely be aware that the term is being used to refer to the colour. What is crucial is that the colour sensation occurs in the conscious mind. Definitions of this type cannot be established for humanly imperceptible ‘colours’ such as ultraviolet. I cannot learn ‘ultraviolet’ as a subjective colour term; it denotes only a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. The term ‘ultraviolet’ is not part of the mental language-game. It exists only in the physical language-game. I cannot remember when I learned the names of more common sensory experiences such as ‘red’ and ‘blue’, as those occasions are lost in early childhood, but I can conceive of no other route than that of private ostensive definition. 2.3 Wittgenstein’s Private-Language Argument I have argued that the private ostensive definition of mental terms is the only way we can give meaning to mental terms. It is widely believed, however, that Wittgenstein refuted the existence of ‘private language’ in general, and hence private ostensive definition in particular. On Wittgenstein’s view, what I have called the ‘mental language-game’ may seem to involve reference to mental states, but that reference is deceptive. Although Wittgenstein’s Private-Language Argument (Philosophical Investigations (1953), §269 et seq.) is frequently cited, it is not so often stated or analysed, partly perhaps because Wittgenstein’s gnomic style of writing militates against the concise statement of his arguments. Let us do so now. In a nutshell, Wittgenstein’s argument is as follows. Although we may naïvely believe that a term such as “red” can refer to a conscious experience, in fact it cannot do so. For, language is a

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wholly public institution and lacks the wherewithal to refer to completely private mental experiences. I may claim that the word “red” refers to one of my experiences, and you may claim that it refers to one of yours, but as we cannot scrutinise and compare each other’s respective experiences, so we cannot establish the word “red” as referring to something in common between our minds. Nor can you establish it as referring to something constant over time within your own mind, since you cannot compare side-by-side the experiences you have at different times. A term such as “red” that you use in everyday life as if to express a private conscious experience is actually used to express a public fact only. If you use the language competently, then it expresses only the fact that the colour you are physically looking at is generally known as “red”. (That identification also brings with it a package of associated facts, all of them publicly observable, such as the wavelength.) Let us now unpack this argument by means of an illustration. Wittgenstein wrote (§271): “Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word ‘pain’ meant – so that he constantly called different things by that name – but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of pain”. This is a fanciful example, but it is logically possible. In fact, we can follow Wittgenstein’s line of thinking further and imagine a person who never has the same sensation twice in any faculty – be it pain, vision, audition, whatever. Every time she looks at the same colour sample, she has a different colour experience; she also has a different sound experience when air waves of a constant frequency impinge on her ears; and so on. To complete this Wittgensteinian thought-experiment, we can suppose that this person is wholly convinced that she is having the same experiences whenever she is given the same sensory stimulus. So, when she looks at the paint sample ‘Tapestry Red’ on Monday and again on Friday, she has two quite different colour experiences, but she has the memory feeling as if the experiences were identical. We might say that her memory is ‘playing a trick’ on her. It is telling her that the experiences are the same even though, in fact, they are not. As long as her memory plays this trick consistently, neither she nor anybody else would ever know that anything is amiss. Wittgenstein uses this thought-experiment to illustrate the decoupling of language from

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mental experience. Terms, such as “red”, that nominally denote the contents of conscious experience, actually have no such meaning. Instead, they play a different role in the language-game. They are indices of publicly observable facts only. When I look at a colour sample and claim that I see the colour red, I am not (according to Wittgenstein) actually reporting a conscious colour experience, but am conveying only that this paint is what we normally call “red”, and by implication it will possess the normal publicly observable properties of red. For example, that other competent speakers will also call it “red”; and that a laboratory technician could measure its reflected light and find its wavelength to be between 740 and 620 nm. This is not to say that a person uttering “I can see red paint” is thinking about the wavelength of the light. Nevertheless he has identified the paint colour’s role in the languagegame, which brings with it a package of implications including the publicly measurable wavelength. Wittgenstein is not denying that we have conscious experiences. He is not arguing (as Gilbert Ryle did) that there is really no colour experience in the mind. Rather, he is arguing that our language is isolated from whatever mental experiences there may be. Wittgenstein bases this theory on how, in principle, utterances can acquire their meanings. The members of a linguistic community can establish the meaning of an utterance by ‘public ostensive definition’ (for example, by pointing to a sample of Colour Council No. 12 and saying, “This is Tapestry Red”) or by analytical definition (for example, by stating the spectral distribution of its reflectance). In practice, there are a myriad ways in which these definitions can be carried out. Most often, you just notice how other people use words, and you unconsciously interiorise that knowledge – which, in effect, is an informal ostensive definition. Private mental experiences, however, are not amenable to definitions of either type. Therefore, says Wittgenstein, no utterance can be established as meaning a private mental experience. To counter Wittgenstein’s Private-Language Argument, I shall argue that his reasoning applies to all languages, not just private ones and therefore entails the reductio ad absurdum that all communication is impossible. This, in fact, is the burden of a point that A.J. Ayer made in his biography Wittgen-

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stein (Ayer 1985, p 75). Suppose that all observable properties of external bodies were to be in continual flux, but that some mischievous intelligence (‘Wittgenstein’s demon’) were continually to recalibrate all measuring instruments and all sense organs, so that everybody still ended up reporting the same observations. For example, suppose the wavelength of light from a blue sky were to shift from one value to another in every moment, but Wittgenstein’s demon simultaneously recalibrated all spectrometers to give a constant reading. Then the physical term ‘blue light’ would not refer to any fixed thing. Likewise for every other observable characteristic. Thus our public language would carry on just as it does now, even in this imagined universally changing world. Therefore, on Wittgenstein’s reasoning, we must conclude that language never means anything. It is a rule-based social activity but signifies nothing. Wittgenstein’s Private-Language Argument fails because direct, public ostensive definition – which he assumes to underpin public language – is not feasible. Strictly speaking, there are no public facts, only facts of varying degrees of privacy. You cannot, in principle, check your perception of a public thing, such as a colour sample, because any checks you make depend on your sensory observations and could be tricked by Wittgenstein’s demon. Even if you ask other members of your linguistic community to confirm that you are using the word “red” competently, the demon may trick all of them into mistaken agreement. Language is at one remove from supposedly public facts. For those facts are not directly knowable, but only inferred from immediate mental experiences – which are themselves private and therefore outside the scope of public ostensive definition. In the public language, utterances are thus not coupled to their meanings in the direct way that Wittgenstein needed. That coupling would require both speaker and hearer to have unmediated access to the supposedly public facts that constitute the meaning of each utterance. In fact, they cannot have such access. In the case of private mental facts, only the speaker has unmediated access; in the case of public external facts, neither party has unmediated access. In practice, we establish the public meaning of both mental and external terms conditionally, on the assumption that the external world is stable, and that the correlation between mind and brain is stable and universal. With

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those assumptions, you can point to a sample of Tapestry Red and be confident that you and I will have very similar mental experiences. You can also be confident that, when you hear other people say it is ‘Tapestry Red’, they are not deceived, and you hear aright. By this means, human communities communicate subtle shades of emotion and sensation. So, for example, in artistic fields as diverse as music and whisky-tasting, private ostensive definitions are routinely communicated between members of those specialised linguistic communities. Thus humankind has built up a language in which we can competently discuss both private mental facts and public external facts. Admittedly, it all rests on the aforementioned assumptions, but, for all practical purposes, those assumptions have served us well for millennia. We have therefore rebutted Wittgenstein’s Private-Language Argument as an objection to our notion of private ostensive definition. We can also reject Dennett’s (1988) use of it. In his usual style of allusive argument, Dennett puts the reader in mind of Wittgenstein’s Private-Language Argument in order to support his denial of qualia, although he does not explicitly infer anything from it. With Wittgenstein’s Argument defeated, however, whatever support Dennett seeks to derive from it likewise fails. 2.4 Analytical Definition of Physical Terms We have examined how meaning is assigned by private ostensive definition to mental terms. We will now examine the assignment of meaning to terms used in the physical sciences, which rest on analytical definition. To clarify ‘analytical definition’, let us first consider a trivial example from set theory. Consider a set X = {p,{a,b,c}} including the operation p:a→b, p:b→c, p:c→c. None of these terms has any meaning beyond the formal one that is explicitly contained in this definition. No amount of further scientific research can discover new properties of p. Nor does it make sense to ask about aspects of p that are not covered by the definition, such as what the mass or the volume of p are. There is an illuminating parallel between mathematical constructs, such as the one above, and literary fictions, such as Sherlock Holmes, and a comparable analogy with computer software, such as a program written

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in Fortran. In each case, there is a text comprising statements about certain entities, which are exhaustively and comprehensively defined by what is written about them in that text. Just as the operation p can have no properties beyond those defined above, so also the person of Sherlock Holmes can possess no details beyond those written by Conan Doyle, nor can an integer variable J have any properties other than those declared in the Fortran program. It would be meaningless to ask whether Holmes, upon rising in the morning, put on his left shoe or his right shoe first, just as it would be meaningless to ask what colour J is. In just this sense, we may say that the entities a,b,c, and p are all fictions. A fiction need not remain forever decoupled from the outside world. It can be bound to the world by explicitly associating each term in the text with something in the observed world. We do this by public ostensive definition: for instance, the fiction of a perfect circle might be applied to some piece of engineering in order to compute its geometry. (In physics, the text is a ‘model’ for the relevant part of the outside world. In literature, the text describes an ‘allegory’ of the world. In computer science we say that a programming language has a ‘binding’ in a particular computer.) Now, returning to our simple example, we can apply the set X as a model of, say, the coffee mug on my table. We can do this by defining an ‘interpretation’ function N that maps the terms into the relevant external set. So, let N:a → ‘the mug is in the middle of the table’; N:b → ‘the mug is near the edge of the table’; N:c → ‘the mug is on the floor’; and N:p → ‘I give the mug a push’. In this trivial example, the separation between the linguistic model and the modelled world is inescapably obvious. In more complex and interesting examples, the customary terminological slackness that mathematics is fond of may tend to blur this distinction. And, in examples in everyday language, the distinction is buried in layers of blur. Chess offers us another example of a fiction (namely the rules of chess) that has a binding in the physical world. For example, in a game of chess, the pieces per se are abstractions, which are defined wholly by their role in the game. But the game can be ‘bound’ to any individual physical chess set. Then you might pick up a wooden piece in your hand and loosely say “This is the King”. Of course, the King remains a relationally defined ab-

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straction, and the wooden King piece is playing that role, but we habitually talk as if the wooden piece were actually the King. Without adequately careful thought, we can easily be misled into conflating the abstraction with its token, and think that the tangible chess piece is the abstract one, that this piece of wood is the King. The philosophically relevant principle that we need to take away from these elementary cases is that the terms that denote fictional things still do so even when the fiction has a binding in some external world. The symbol “p” itself still denotes a fiction, even when that symbol has a binding to my pushing my mug; and in chess “King” still denotes a fiction even when it has a binding to a particular piece of wood. It is not too difficult to bear this distinction in mind when dealing with such shallow fictions. What is harder, but crucially important, is to continue to bear it mind when we deal with deeper fictions. There is a contrary claim that we have to consider here, which I shall call ‘anti-fictivism’. This is the claim that when a formalism such as X is bound to an external world, it ceases to be a fiction and becomes a description of the mapped part of the external world. This claim does not go through because of the ‘topic-neutrality’ of the fiction. Topic-neutrality is a term introduced in this context by Gilbert Ryle (1949) and developed by J.J.C. Smart (1963). It means that the fiction picks out certain logical features of the denotand but leaves completely open the intrinsic character of what is denoted by its terms. In a nutshell, the argument is as follows. If an account, such as X, is topic-neutral, then it leaves undefined the intrinsic character of what it denotes; but any really existing thing will have an intrinsic character of some sort; therefore an account such as X cannot be about any really existing thing. That is to say, it is fictive. A corollary of topic-neutrality is that a fiction can have many different bindings. My trivial formalism, X, can serve as a model not only of my mug, but also of any other object lying on the table, such as my pen. Another example is that of the formalism of chess, which applies to every chess-set in the world, whatever size, colour, or material. The topic-neutrality of shallow fictions such as these is obvious. I have dwelt upon it in order to make the principle stand out. For, the same principle applies to the topic-neutrality of

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the deeper fictions of physics. Before we move on to consider physics, there is a further consideration I would offer to bolster my position. Returning again to the formalism of X, let us now suppose that I have a virtual-reality program running on my computer, which displays a graphical image of my mug on my table. Instead of actually pushing the mug, I can press the arrow key on the keyboard, which gives a virtual push to the virtual mug, which in turn is portrayed on the screen. Now re-bind the formalism of X, so that N:a → ‘the virtual mug is in the middle of the virtual table’, N:p → ‘I give the virtual mug a virtual push’, and so on. There is no longer any attraction to claiming that the formalism of X is a description of the external world, rather than a fiction that happens to be bound in a certain way. For, the codomain of the interpretation function, N, does not strictly exist. Since the virtual mug and the table do not actually exist but are only simulations on a computer, it cannot be contended that X is describing something in the external world. Here, the fictivity of X is transparently obvious, but my argument is that this X is always a fiction because it is topic-neutral. The other philosophically significant point to take away from this simple example is that what is observed (namely, the coloured pixels on the screen) is orthogonal to what the formalism X denotes (the mug and the table). In this particular example, an inscrutable mechanism – the computer software – operates a virtual reality that manifests an observable world structured as a virtual three-dimensional space that is depicted on the screen, obeying a formalism, or set of mechanical laws. According to Berkeley, a similar schema applies to our everyday world. The ‘inscrutable mechanism’ is God, and the ‘structure of the observable world’ is all that the physical sciences can find. 2.5 The Fictional Nature of Physical Things Topic-neutrality is a general concept and is not limited to the particular kind of topic-neutrality that we have been considering. Ryle and Smart originally ascribed topic-neutrality to consciousness, but here we follow Foster’s

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(1982) opposite conclusion of ascribing it to physics. Foster notes the irony of this reversal thus: “It seems to me that this way of defending physicalistic realism against the intuitive objection fails. It seems to me that, in a sense, it fails catastrophically, since it manages to get everything exactly the wrong way round. It locates topic-neutrality at the very point where our concepts and descriptions are topic-specific, and it locates topic-specificity at the very point where they are topic-neutral.” As we shall now see, it is physics that is topicneutral, not the phenomenology of the mind. Physics posits a number of entities, traditionally the proton, neutron, and electron, but now encompassing a zoo of elementary particles. Each particle is exhaustively and exclusively defined by its mathematical properties – its mass, charge, spin, and so on. On this view, the proton (like all the other particles) is, strictly speaking, a mathematical construct, or fiction. The proton is topic-neutral precisely because it is exclusively and exhaustively defined by its extrinsic relations and not by any intrinsic qualities. It is nothing but a construct that is wholly defined by that combination of extrinsic mathematical properties. There is a key objection that every physicist will raise here: “Surely, the proton is a real thing that exists out there in the external world, and the mathematical properties are a description of the proton, not a definition of it”. That, however, is precisely to forget what we learned above from considering such simple examples as set X, and the game of chess. The account of the proton and other particles is clearly topic-neutral, because the theories of physics allude to only the properties of the particles that are enumerated in their mathematical definitions – their mass, charge, spin, and so on. The collective text of physics gives us a ‘model’, or as I would like to say, a ‘fiction’. That model can be given a binding in the structure of the observable world, but because the text is topic-neutral, the terms of the collective text of physics still denote constructs, or ‘fictions’. Furthermore, the entities that are denoted in the text of physics are inherently inscrutable because an observer can directly observe only the contents of her conscious perception. It cannot seriously be contended that anybody has direct conscious experience of protons and other elementary particles. Nor can any seriously reflective person propose that we can make direct observations of

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macroscopic bodies that are supposedly made up of elementary particles. Lloyd (1999a, section 2.2.4) argues at length against such ‘naïve realism’. This analysis is akin to that of Margenau (1984) who emphasises that what I have called the ‘structure’ of the observable world (his ‘constructs’) exhibits a gradation of abstraction away from what is consciously observed. So, the conclusion that we are drawn to is that the physical world is a fiction. The resistance to this conclusion, especially among scientists, cannot be overestimated. Vehement denial is the normal response, but evoking a coherent counter-argument is not so easy. So, instead, we have to analyse some of the more visceral responses to it. The responses can largely be characterised as the claim that we ‘know’ that physical particles are not fictions, because we can reach out and touch tangible macroscopic objects, such as a table, which are assemblages of those very particles. This is a conflation of immediate perception with abstract constructs that are projected onto it. When you touch the table, you have a conscious tactile experience: this is inside your conscious mind. It is not a bridge from the mental to the physical, it is not a trans-mental encounter with an assemblage of atoms: it is an event that occurs within the realm of consciousness. Onto that conscious experience is mapped the physical event of your fingers touching the surface of the table (the first level of Margenau’s constructs), and from that you infer that the atoms in your finger are encountering the atoms of the table (a deeper level of Margenau’s constructs). Nevertheless, the feeling of solidity, of resistance to movement, of the brute fact of ‘being there’ – is all, literally, in your mind. It is a pattern of conscious experience. And that mental experience of resistance is precisely what, I believe, people are alluding to when they say that they know that matter is really ‘out there’. They are saying, in effect, that there is a manifold of tactile resistance that the conscious mind engages with. But that conscious experience of solidity is conceptually quite separate from the mathematical model of the physical system. To object that the physical system cannot be a fiction because you can feel it to be solid is to lose sight of that conceptual distinction between perceived solidity and a mathematical model.

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2.6 Conclusions: Part One From the earlier sections, we must conclude that what is denoted by mental terms is directly observed, for otherwise it could not be denoted by mental terms – and therefore it must be objectively real; while what is denoted by physical terms is an abstraction by its definition, and hence a construct. From this, the conclusion of mental monism is inescapable. At the start of this paper, we sought to assess mental monism. We saw that it was a logically possible solution to an otherwise seemingly insoluble problem, but we recognised that it was universally derided as absurd. Nonetheless, for the sake of completeness, we were obliged to examine the argument for mental monism. Now, however, we see that the twin pillars of Berkeley’s semantic argument for mental monism are sound: on the one hand, the veridicality of the phenomenological language; and on the other hand the topic-neutrality, and hence fictivity, of physics. Thus mental monism is supported by this argument. Of course, this is an unwelcome conclusion. Therefore we shall look further afield, for some other theory that can accommodate that argument but save us from mental monism. 2.7 Neutral Monism When confronted by the realisation that the mental world is not reducible to the physical, a common move for physicalists is to migrate to neutral monism. This is a theory originally associated with Bertrand Russell (1927), which has gained followers in recent years, as research in consciousness studies reveals the inadequacy of physical monism. Its central claim is that there is some ultimate substance of the universe that is neither physical nor mental. Chalmers (1996b, p127) refers to such stuff as having ‘protophenomenal’ properties. How does neutral substance differ from physical substance? An account of neutral substance is topic-neutral, while in contrast physical substance is supposed to have some uniquely physical intrinsic character. As we have seen above, however, any account of physical substance is also topicneutral. The enterprise of neutral monism collapses as soon as it is recognised

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that physics is, in fact, already topic-neutral and there is no intrinsic physical character. More precisely, my argument against neutral monism is that, (i) any terms that do not denote mental things must be defined analytically rather than by private ostensive definition, and therefore must be topic-neutral; but (ii) physical terms are topic-neutral and therefore denote no specifically physical intrinsic character, and hence (iii) protophenomenal stuff is, in fact, no different from physical stuff – and neutral monism is, in effect, a variant of physical monism. Therefore we can conclude that the neutral monistic substance, the protophenomenal stuff, is a fiction (or construct) just as physical substance is. Another way of looking at it is that the ‘Hard Problem’ resurfaces in neutral monism. Let N be the neutral-monistic facts associated with my seeing this table. Why is N accompanied by conscious experience? In its essence, this problem is the same as the original one: let P be the physical brain facts associated with seeing this table; why is P accompanied by conscious experience? This sterility of neutral monism leads its proponents to smuggle consciousness in by the back door, giving rise to the theory that I shall call ‘mental-structural dualism’. 2.8 Mental-Structural Dualism René Descartes was the first and most famous proponent of fullblooded dualism (Descartes, 1637). According to that theory, there are characteristic intrinsic properties of both physical things and mental things, which are mutually exclusive. Hence Descartes was a ‘substance dualist’: he said there were distinct physical things and mental things. This theory could not explain interactions between physical things and mental things. For example, if minds are not located anywhere in physical space, why should my mind interact with my brain rather than yours or anybody else’s? Trying to tackle that problem led to ‘property dualism’, in which there was supposed to be only one set of things, but they had properties of two kinds, mental and physical. This, of course, contradicted the non-spatial nature of the mind ― which is what had driven Descartes to dualism in the first place. Both of those forms of full-blooded dualism inevitably fail because, as we have seen above, there is

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no characteristic intrinsic quality of being physical. Physical terms are topicneutral. So the physical half of any such dualism collapses to vacuity. The next theory is anaemic dualism, or what I shall call ‘mental-structural dualism’. This theory maintains that the constituents of the world have intrinsic phenomenal qualities, but are structured as physical things. Lockwood (1987) expressed this by saying that the conscious mind is the physical brain seen from the inside. Rosenberg (2004, p 78) briefly outlines the history of what I call ‘mental-structural dualism’ and he calls ‘liberal naturalism’. Mentalstructural dualism is a half-way house between neutral monism and property dualism. Neutral monism says that ultimate reality is neutral in the sense that it contains neither physical nor mental intrinsic qualities. Property dualism says that ultimate reality is both mental and physical, and contains intrinsic qualities of both sorts. Between those two theories, mental-structural dualism allows that reality possesses intrinsic mental characteristics, together with structural and extrinsic physical characteristics – but not any intrinsic physical characteristics. Eddington (1928) advanced a naïve early formulation of what I am calling mental-structural dualism: “We realise now that science has nothing to say as to the intrinsic nature of the atom. Our knowledge of the objects treated in physics consists solely of a schedule of pointer readings. The schedule is we agree attached to some unknown background. Why not then attach it to something of a spiritual nature of which a prominent characteristic is thought”. Lockwood (1998, p 90) advocated a specific form of mental-structural dualism: “My proposal is that a quale is the intrinsic reality corresponding to an occupied point within an n-dimensional quality space, points within which are defined by n-tuples of simultaneously realisable eigenvalues of a set of n compatible observables on the relevant subsystem of the brain.” In his doctoral thesis and subsequent book, A Place for Consciousness, Rosenberg (1997, 1999, 2004) has elaborated a version of mental-structural dualism, to which he gives the oxymoronic name of ‘pan-experientialist neutral monism’. (It is oxymoronic in so far as ‘neutral monism’ posits a reality devoid of conscious experience, contrary to ‘pan-experientialism’. It is also misleading, as he advocates, not neutral monism, but what I have called men-

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tal-structural dualism.) Discussing parallels between his work and that of Lockwood (1989, 1993), he writes, “Lockwood suggests that phenomenal consciousness fails to logically supervene on the physical because physical concepts are content-neutral, merely specifying the structure of the causal flux. Phenomenal qualities and consciousness, on the other hand, are defined precisely by their content” (Rosenberg 2004, p 111) – which is a neat summary of why physical monism cannot succeed. He continues, “Lockwood suggests that a nice solution is simply to draft phenomenal properties into duty as the content of the causal flux whose structure is described by physics” — which is a neat summary of the mental-structural dualist theory that results from introducing consciousness into neutral monism, as Rosenberg himself does. Rosenberg, along with Lockwood and Chalmers before him, want to bring consciousness in at the basement level, as a fundamental element of reality. All of them seek to achieve this by proposing that there is phenomenal content of some sort associated with even the most finely grained physical process. The individuation of human minds is a challenge to mental-structural dualism. If every elementary particle has some minuscule phenomenal property, how does the phenomenal world consist of private streams of consciousness corresponding to individual human brains? We should have expected either that each elementary particle would have mental privacy or that there would a single universal mind. Rosenberg’s objection to Lockwood is primarily that Lockwood does not give a principled account of this individuation of the phenomenal world into personal minds, whereas Rosenberg gives a very complicated theory to try to explain it. Otherwise, the philosophies are very close. Even with his account of the individuation of human minds, Rosenberg has to bite the bullet of panexperientialism. Any plausible theory of mental-structural dualism (or, indeed, property dualism) that ascribes phenomenal properties at the microlevel entails that conscious experience pervades every nook and cranny of the universe. This does not faze him, though: “it is not even clear in what sense the intuition against panexperientialism really is a common sense intuition. Many other cultures have seriously entertained or endorsed an animistic metaphysics and it is certainly possible that

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the current rejection of distantly related views like panexperientialism is somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction against what are seen to be more primitive or theistic views.” Likewise, Strawson (1999, 2005) proposes a mental-structural dualism with pan-experientialism at the micro-level. He has, however, made interesting claims about its relation to the monisms, which we shall now look at. 2.9 Mental-Structural Dualism versus Mental and Physical Monisms Mental-structural dualism is a special case of mental monism, in the following respect. Mental monism’s defining tenet is that reality is fundamentally mental, whilst mental-structural dualism’s defining tenet is that reality is fundamentally mental, but structured by the ontology of physics and subject to the nomological constraints of physical laws. Strawson (1999, 2005) makes the opposite claim that mental-structural dualism is a form of physical monism. This has been misread in some quarters as the merely terminological tactic of redefining the word ‘physical’ to encompass the mental. In fact, Strawson’s starting point is the topic neutrality of physics, which leaves open the intrinsic nature of the physical, and he proposes that the intrinsic nature of the physical is mental. In this way, he is able to assert that reality is just the physical world, but it includes the mental world as its intrinsic nature. Strawson argues validly but from the false premise that the phrase ‘physical world’ refers to an external reality, which is described by the laws of physics. On the view that I defended earlier, however, the physical world is a model or construct which we bind or project onto the regularities of the phenomenal world. Therefore, the phrase ‘physical world’ does not bear a semantic reference to a real thing, and the laws of physics define a closed formal system and do not describe an external reality. Physical monism asserts that the physical world is all that exists, but that cannot be true because it ascribes an independent reality to something that is purely notional. Trying to ascribe phenomenal qualities to physical things is as incoherent as trying to ascribe them to any abstraction such as the number five. In contrast, mental-physical dualism is at least coherent, as it ascribes extrinsic physical relations to really ex-

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isting conscious phenomena. Nevertheless, Strawson’s assertion of physical monism – that is, that reality consists of the physical world – would still be a useful metaphor if mental-physical dualism were true – that is, if the phenomenal world were actually isomorphic to the physical. Can mental-structural dualism be true? No, because the binding of micro-experiencers into macro-experiencers imposes an untenable spatial ordering on the mental world. As I argued at length elsewhere (Lloyd 1999a, section 2.4), if spatial location could be predicated of mental things (as it can be of physical things) then a conscious mind could be subjected to spatiotemporal dissection, but that contradicts the observable unity of the conscious mind. Therefore, by reductio ad absurdum, consciousness cannot be spatial. In a nutshell, the argument given by Lloyd (1999a) is as follows. Suppose that two mental facts Ma and Mb are co-conscious, i.e. they occur at the same psychological moment in your mind, but they are identified with spatially separated brain events Ba and Bb. Suppose that the physical correlate of the co-consciousness of Ma and Mb is the transmission of some causal influence C between Ba and Bb. Now, conduct an experiment in which Ba and Bb occur simultaneously at time T1 but C is delayed substantially until T2. Then mentalstructural dualism predicts that Ma and Mb will occur at T1 but will not be coconscious until T2. This contradicts the psychologically necessary fact that Ma and Mb must be co-conscious when they occur and cannot become co-conscious retrospectively. Despite Rosenberg’s theory of how personal minds are individuated, mental-structural dualism cannot avoid the assumption that minds are extended in space. But, by the dissection argument outlined above, any theory of spatially extended consciousness must fail. We are thus forced to relinquish mental-structural dualism in favour of a Berkeleian mental monism, which takes macro-experiencers as primitive. Hence also, Strawson’s assertion of physical monism is not valid even as a heuristic metaphor. 2.10 The Metamind Like Berkeley in his De Motu, Rosenberg correctly recognises the hid-

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den force of causality as belying the active presence of an agency that ultimately makes things happen. Whilst the laws of physics may prescribe the form of what can happen, they necessarily fall silent on what makes the real world toe the nomological line that physics measures out. Rosenberg’s answer is that consciousness is the carrier of that agency. But what is the agency? Berkeley’s answer was that the agency is the will of God. This answer is empirical, in so far as we have an acquaintance with volition in our everyday lives, as manifested in the free will of our voluntary acts. But does the answer have any explanatory power? Before we discuss this, I shall propose a change of nomenclature. The word “God” has a vast, and culturally charged, hinterland of connotation and association. Whilst leaving aside the question of whether Berkeley was right, I propose that we use the term ‘metamind’ (Lloyd 1999a) to denote the posited mind that drives all natural phenomena that we ourselves do not will. In the Berkeleian picture, therefore, the world comprises phenomenal qualities, grouped and associated somehow, in which there is a single, uniform kind of agency — volition — with which we have direct acquaintance in everyday life. All processes that are not driven by our own volitional acts are driven by volitional acts of another mind, the ‘metamind’. Berkeley largely glossed over the internal structure of the metamind. He asserted that the metamind contained within itself ‘archetypes’ of the macroscopic objects that we see around us as the furniture of the world. All he would say of those archetypes was the negative observation that there was no reason to think that they resembled what we experience mentally when we observed the corresponding objects. His analogy was that of a musical score, which does not resemble the music that the player renders it as in our hearing. Likewise, God’s archetypes need not resemble the perceptions that God renders them as in our minds. That Berkeley did not attempt to penetrate the metamind does not preclude our attempting to do so. On the contrary, the scientific imperative dictates that we seek to analyse and understand in full the workings of the metamind. We must, as it were, reverse engineer the manifest world in order to discover the informatic structure of the metamind. Only then will the metamind serve as an explanatory concept. This, then, measures the distance from

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mental-structural dualism to mental monism: mental-structural dualism presupposes (mistakenly, as I have argued above) that the metamind is isomorphic to the physical world; whereas mental monism denies that the metamind can have a physicalistic structure but regards the actual structure as a subject for scientific investigation and discovery. There is, I think, an illuminating parallel to be drawn with virtual reality systems. If we compare our manifest phenomenal world to the visual, auditory, and tactile imagery that is output by a virtual-reality computer system, then the metamind corresponds to the software driving the simulation. Within that software, there are modules that simulate individual objects, and which can render the appropriate imagery for any observer’s particular point-ofview. Once we start thinking of the metamind in this way, we find a potentially fruitful framework for formulating hypotheses about the informatic structure of it. We have a point of departure for probing the metamind. 2.11 Conclusions: Part Two As we have seen, the collective discourse of physics is topic-neutral. It defines logico-mathematical structures but fails to make semantic reference to the basic reality of the universe. In contrast, the collective discourse of consciousness succeeds in making reference to an immediately apprehended world of phenomenal content. Physics defines a model of the observed structural patterns of the phenomenal world. The physical model cannot be isomorphic to the mental world, because the mental world exhibits unity at the level of private personal minds. The processes of the mental world that are not driven by personal volition are attributed to the ‘metamind’, whose internal structure must be discovered by scientific investigation.

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3 Modelling the Mind-Brain Interface Although the mental and physical worlds are ontologically different, we know from every moment of waking life that there is a close correlation between at least part of the mind’s contents and part of the physical world. You have sensory experiences that correlate with the patterns of energy transduced by your body’s sense organs. In short, you see what your eyes look at, and so on. Furthermore, it is well known from elementary biology that the true locus of correlation is not at the outward-facing surface of the sense organs but at some internal points of cognitive processing in the brain. There are two important questions here. (a) Where is the locus of the mind-brain correlation? (b) What does the correlation signify? 3.1 Locus of the mind-brain interface By ‘locus’ I do not mean just which anatomical structure it is in, but rather what kind of structure or aspect of brain tissue it is. A key clue lies in the fact that the conscious mind can affect the brain. This is demonstrated by the fact that your body can report your conscious mental states. Yet the physical world is subject to its own internal nomological constraints: there are causal laws that, for a given physical state at time T1, limit what the physical state can be at a later time, T2. In a deterministic universe (for example, one obeying classical mechanics, such as a Newtonian universe), with fixed initial conditions, the nomological constraints are closed in the sense that the total state of the universe at any time is predetermined. Such a universe could not manifest conscious minds. A brain could never report conscious states in such a universe, because the physical state at each successive moment in time is determined entirely by the antecedent physical state irrespective of anyone’s conscious mental content. Therefore, physical non-determinism is a requisite for the mind-brain interface. And the locus of the mind-brain correlation must comprise non-deterministic events or conditions. There are two possible kinds of non-determinism in this context that could serve as an interface through which con-

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sciousness could manifest in a physical world. Namely, the initial conditions, and causal discontinuities. We shall examine each in turn. 3.2 Open Initial Conditions A deterministic (e.g. Newtonian) universe with fixed initial conditions cannot form an interface with consciousness. But if some unobserved initial conditions are not fixed, and if the world possesses dynamical systems that are mathematically ‘chaotic’ then there is, in principle, an opportunity for an interface into consciousness. (A system is mathematically ‘chaotic’ if its macroscopic behaviour is sensitive to arbitrarily small changes in its antecedent conditions. No matter how precisely you measure the system’s state at time T1, the residual measurement error will be sufficient to hide the early causes of macroscopic effects at subsequent time T2.) To articulate how the initial conditions can offer an interface to consciousness, it is crucial to differentiate the physical time and mental time. The former is just the conventional linear dimension in which events are described as occurring in the textbooks of physics. The latter dimension is defined by the succession of mental events. Recall that, by the arguments of the preceding section of this essay, the physical world is a construct invented by the conscious mind to rationalise the observed structure of the phenomenal world. It does not have a mind-independent reality. Therefore the physical universe as a whole, including its entire course of development over physical time, has a dependence on mental time. Let U(Tp) be the state of the physical universe at physical time Tp, and let W = {U(Tp): for all Tp up to now} be the ordered set of all such states until now. Now, the natural view is that U(Tp) is a function of mental time Tm, and we could write (U(Tp))(Tm) to express its dependence. What this means is that the community of conscious minds (or, for that matter, an individual conscious mind) asserts a body of physical statements that, taken together, defines a physical universe. Needless to say, what we choose to define as the physical universe is driven by the observed patterns and structures of the phenomenal world, which is in turn driven by the metamind. So there is a deeper dependence on the metamind. But the metamind, in so far as it is a mind,

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evolves in mental time, and so it is encompassed by the term Tm in the representation (U(Tp))(Tm). What I would propose, however, is that not only the current universe U but the whole time-series W = {U(Tp)} depends on mental time, thus: W(Tm). Stated bluntly, this means that the physical past can be changed in the mental present. In order for this to be a realistic model, there must be a constraint of backwards compatibility. It would be absurd to propose that things that were observed to happen in physical-yesterday should retrospectively, in mentaltoday cease to be the case. Any changes made to the physical past must be consistent with the cumulative mass of observations that have been made by conscious minds. Let O(Tm) be all the observed facts of the universe up to mental time Tm. Then the mental-time dependence exhibited by the physicaltime series of universe states, W(Tm), is subject to the constraint that O(Tm) is monotonically increasing in mental time. It might be expected that this constraint would render the mental-time dependence of W inconsequential. If it allows only the unobserved physical states of the past to be changed, then ― so what? The significance lies in the fact that unobserved states in the past may result in observable states in the present and the future. Furthermore, in a chaotic dynamical system (such as the brain), arbitrarily small changes to unobserved states in the past can yield macroscopically observable states in the present. There is therefore a window of opportunity for consciousness to influence the world without violating the nomological order of the physical world. Consider some mental time Tm corresponding to physical time Tp. If consciousness at mental time Tm were to change the hitherto unobserved states of the physical world at times prior to Tp, it could bring about observable changes in the world at Tp and afterwards. Obviously, this mere logical possibility does not mean that it is realised. Nevertheless, since it is known that consciousness does influence the world, and as this is the only route by which it could do so in a nomologically bound deterministic world, then there is strong prima facie evidence for this theory.

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3.3 Quantum-Mechanical Non-Determinism We do not, however, live in a deterministic Newtonian world but in a non-deterministic quantum-mechanical world. In this world, the foregoing conclusion that consciousness could affect the unobserved physically-past events in order to change physically-present or future events still holds. But now it is broadened into a more general mechanism. For, in the formalism of quantum mechanics, the unobserved behaviour of a system over time is constituted by the deterministic time evolution of the Schrödinger wave, which represents the probability distribution of each observable. But the observation of a system is represented by an operator that yields a non-deterministic value of the observable, statistically weighted by the current value of the probability distribution. Thus it is not only the hitherto unobserved initial conditions that could be influenced, but each contemporary measurement of a quantum observable. There is often a confusion in popular scientific understanding between randomness and non-determinism, and the terms are often used interchangeably. Physical non-determinism refers to the fact that the successive physical states are not bound by the antecedent physical states. Randomness is the statistical property of a particular kind of non-determinism, in which a particular probability distribution is exhibited. For example, if the release of a radioactive particle from a decaying atom is non-deterministic, it means that the time of the release is not determined from antecedent physical states. If it is random, it is required to follow a certain probability distribution, namely that it has a fifty per cent probability of being released within a given length of time. Each individual occurrence is still undetermined, but collectively these events must tend toward that probabilistic pattern. (There is also confusion with a third term, ‘unpredictable’. Obviously, the successive states of a physically non-deterministic system cannot be predicted from antecedent states; but, on the other hand, the successive states of a deterministic but chaotic physical system cannot be predicted, either.) I shall say that a ‘purely random’ physical event is one that is structured only by the physically required probability distribution. A purely random event cannot serve as a gateway to consciousness, because ipso facto it is not influenced by any other

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constraint than the probability distribution. Nevertheless, individual non-deterministic events that are not purely random can be shaped by consciousness provided that the overall statistics tend toward the correct distribution. Suppose, as a purely hypothetical example, consciousness operated by changing the times at which neurotransmitter molecules tunnelled across synapses. The timing might be adjusted to coincide with other neurochemical events occurring, to enable a particular motor pathway to be activated for some overt action to take place. Yet the statistical properties observed in that synapse may remain fully compliant with the laws of physics. Ultimately, all initial conditions in the physical universe arose out of quantum mechanical non-determinism, for in the Big Bang the entire universe was small enough to lie within the range of Heisenberg’s uncertainty. Since then, however, the universe has grown much bigger, and any observer inside the universe will not be able to observe the non-deterministic collapse of the original probability wave. Therefore there seem to be two distinct concepts of how the physical world can have an interface into consciousness: (a) through unobserved initial conditions in general, and (b) through the collapse of probabilistic wave functions. There is therefore an empirical question of whether, as a matter of fact, our consciousness uses (a) initial conditions or only (b) quantum measurements. This is still an open question but, as I shall argue elsewhere, there is tentative support for (a). 3.4 Operation of the Interface Voluntary actions, including reports of conscious experiences, are limited to a repertoire of likely actions, surrounded (in the space of possibilities) by a penumbra of increasingly likely acts. If you ask me to visualise a colour and then report what I see, then I am likely to name a common colour, rather than a rare colour or something that is not a colour at all. So, the brain has set up a number of motor pathways, each of which leads to a particular colour utterance. And, at a common point in those pathways is a sub-network of brain cells that, depending on how they fire, could trigger any of those motor pathways. Each brain cell is generally firing at a low rate of electrical noise under

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the influence of electrical noise from other parts of the brain, together with the Brownian motion of neurotransmitters in synapses and other environmental factors. Needless to say, those myriad minute influences will not normally be observed. So the necessary change is essentially a change in the collective behaviour of the brain cells due to unobserved prior conditions. On the face of it, therefore, there seems to be plenty of scope for consciousness to modify the unobserved micro-conditions so as to switch the brain’s course of activity one way or another. So there does not seem to be any obvious need to invoke quantum-mechanical non-determinism. Penrose and Hameroff have generated a lot of interest in the theory that quantum-mechanical events in the microtubules of brain cells could be the physical correlates of consciousness. There is a great deal of controversy about this, the main argument against it being that the brain is too hot for microtubules to be isolated long enough for useful coherence to develop. The line of reasoning that I have developed in the foregoing paragraphs suggests that the physical correlates of consciousness may actually be much broader. The details of how the conscious mind interacts with the physical brain may seem far removed from our earlier broad-sweeping arguments about the nature of reality, but the two lines of investigation are intimately connected. For, if our earlier conclusion is correct, that consciousness is not reducible to physics, then we must face the challenge of giving an account of how consciousness can influence a nomologically well-behaved physical world. This is a matter for investigation over and above the study of the brain on its own. For instance, how does the conscious mind know which non-deterministic events it must modify in order to produce its required voluntary action? If the conscious mind wants a physical outcome P at time TP, it must trigger one or more physically non-deterministic events Ei at time Ti < TP. How does it know which Ei will suffice? The most naturalistic hypothesis would be that the mind activates a neural nexus that represents the perception of the outcome, and is cross-linked to motor nerves so as to produce the necessary action – without the conscious mind needing to know such details as which muscle groups to use.

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3.5 Significance of the Mind-Brain Interface If consciousness is not derived from the physical mechanisms of the brain, then why do drugs and brain surgery affect conscious experience? A common analogical answer is to compare the brain to a television set. A magnet on the TV screen will affect the picture, but it would be absurd to infer that, say, a news presenter is inside the television set. The television set is a conduit to receive pictures from a remote studio; likewise the brain is a conduit to transceive motor commands and sensory inputs for a remote mind. A better analogue might be an email package on a computer. If your email program has been damaged in some way, then it may corrupt incoming email messages, and send out corrupt emails. Likewise a damaged brain may corrupt both imagery from the senses to the mind, and motor commands that are conveyed from the mind to the muscles, as well as access to memory and logic modules. A conceptual caveat is needed here. We talk of a correlation between the mind and ‘the brain’, but really there is no brain. We are really talking about a correlation between the mind and a notional construct that is abstracted from the manifold of conscious experience. Consider this trivial neurological intervention: pressing on the right-hand side of the right-hand eyeball, so as to produce phosphenes (in the left-hand visual field). According to mental monism, the finger and the eyeball are virtual. In this case, the metamind internally models the physical finger pressing the physical eyeball. From that model, it renders a visual image of the finger in the right-hand visual field along with a tactile image of the finger against the skin of the eyelid. This is the ‘normal manifestation’. But the metamind will also generate a visual sensation of phosphenes in the left-hand visual field. This I shall call the ‘intervention manifestation’. Thus we see what seems like a physical object causing a sensory impression, when in fact both images are brought about by the metamind. Why are there these two different routes of manifestation? It is because consciousness has to interact with a physical world through some physical apparatus (in our case, the brain) that embeds the locus of the mental-physical interface within the physical world. So, there is inevitably the possibility that

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we can interfere with the normal workings of that apparatus by sticking a finger into it, or dropping some chemical into it. Therefore the fact that there are two modes of presentation (normal and intervention manifestation) does not present a difficulty for mental monism. Why do we have brains and eyes at all? If the mind sees things by direct ‘telepathic’ communication with the metamind, why did eyes evolve? Almost certainly, they evolved just as evolutionary biology says they did, since the (virtual) physical world follows the laws of physics and biophysics. Nevertheless, biological structures, such as the optic nerve and the retina, are rendered in the manifest world only when they are observed directly – for example, in a dissection or invasive medical examination. They are virtual and therefore cannot be part of the mechanism that conveys information between metamental modules. 3.6 Modularity of the Metamind We do not have access to the inner workings of the metamind, and we might never do. Nevertheless, we can attempt to reverse-engineer the metamind’s computational workings by putting forward principled hypotheses and seeking to derive testable predictions from them. First, I propose that it is implausible that the metamind is a single, monolithic computation. The manifest world comprises macroscopic bodies that can be manipulated at will. If the metamind were monolithic then it would continually be subject to structural revision as the objects are built up, broken down, and rearranged. More fundamentally, it is hard to imagine how the metamind could have evolved into a single over-arching superstructure. We certainly do not want to posit some higher intelligence that designed the metamind. Therefore my first working hypothesis is that the metamind resolves into modules at the level of macroscopic objects. The existence of personal minds corroborates this hypothesis. We could imagine a universe in which streams of conscious are individuated at a smaller scale than ours are, corresponding perhaps to, say, sensory modalities. Equally, we could imagine a world in which streams of consciousness are individuated at a larger scale, corresponding to family groups, or communities, or races. That conscious minds are individuated at the level of

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human beings suggests that this is a natural level of granularity in the metamental architecture. More importantly, however, this scale of modularity is likely to be economical. When we observe an object, we generally observe only the surface: we see the light reflected from the surface and feel the texture of the surface. So it would be otiose for the metamind to resolve into parcels within the object. If we accept as a working hypothesis that the metamind resolves into functional modules that generally correspond to macroscopic bodies, then what can we say about the exchange of information between these modules? Consider the act of looking at a desk. The information flow in the mental monist’s model is very different from that in a physical monist’s model. In the physical model, the information flow is as follows. Light shines on the desk from some source such as a window, and it is reflected by the surface in all directions. Your eyeballs happen to lie in a certain position in relation to both the desk and the original light source, and a flux of light that has been reflected off the table enters your eyes. The retina converts the optical image into a two-dimensional pattern of neural signals. There is no flow of information in the opposite direction. The desk is marginally affected by the incidence of light – it will absorb a minuscule amount of heat – but it is not affected at all by your looking at it. In computing terms, the desk does not even know it is being looked at, let alone who is looking at it. Now, in the mental monist’s model, the information flow is as follows. According to the hypothesis of economy, the module of the metamind that is responsible for the table will generate imagery, not for every possible direction but for only any direction in which a conscious being is observing it. Furthermore, the module needs to know about you, the perceiver. It needs to know the modelled spatial position of your eyes. And it needs to know how to address your conscious mind so that it can deliver the imagery. Conversely, your mind must at some level know how to address the desk module. So, you – the observer – send a signal of some sort to the module, requesting the imagery; and the module replies with the appropriate imagery. In crude terms, you telepathically ask the desk what it looks like, and it telepathically shows you. If mental monism is to be accepted then we do need to model the internal structure of the meta-

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mind, and this seems a plausible direction in which to probe. 3.7 Concluding Remarks I started by saying that there is at least a formal requirement to assess mental monism as a candidate solution to the mind-body problem. On examining mental monism, we find that the theory is logically supported by Berkeley’s semantic argument, and it seems to be the only solution that adequately resolves the issues that Berkeley’s argument raises. From a purely philosophical perspective, a strong case can be made for mental monism. But, if the metamind merely rendered a manifest world compliant with the laws of physics, then mental monism – even though correct – would be a rather sterile theory. The fact that we can report our conscious experiences demonstrates that the non-physical, phenomenal character of conscious experiences can affect the physical machinery of our nervous system. The ramifications of this simple fact are staggering, but somehow seem to slip into a lacuna of the collective intellectual awareness of the industrialised West. Lloyd (1999) has argued that, on some possible views of how the metamind operates, we can deduce testable hypotheses in the field of parapsychology. This is outside the scope of the present paper, but will be expanded in forthcoming papers.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Dimitri Constant for his useful remarks on Wittgenstein, and Richard Conn Henry for his comments on quantum consciousness.

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Strawson, G. (2005). Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism (or at least Micropsychism). Plenary paper, Toward a Science of Consciousness, 17-20th August 2005. Von Neumann, J. (1932). Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Wachowski, L. & Wachowski, A. (Dir.) (1999). The Matrix, Warner Brothers. Warnock, G.J. (1953). Berkeley. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. (note: Dennett references the second edition, 1958.) Wolf, F.A. (1984). StarWave: Mind, Consciousness and Quantum Physics. New York: Macmillan.

Telepathy: Or, How do I Know that this Thought is Mine? Fiona Steinkamp

1 Introduction Telepathy is the purported ability to communicate directly mind to mind – that is, it is an ostensible exchange of information without the use of any of the known senses. Although, arguably, there is some experimental evidence for telepathy (see, e.g., Bem & Honorton 1994; Milton & Wiseman 1999; Storm & Ertel 2001), there is no evidence that it can operate either reliably or on demand. Therefore, “telepathy” here will mean “ostensible telepathy” throughout. Conceptually, telepathy can be understood in a variety of ways. One way is to regard it as a direct mental influence on someone else’s mind. That is, one person at will makes another person have a particular thought. It is the sender who is the active person. For instance, someone who is lost on a mountain top may try mentally to will someone to come to where they are. Stanford (1974) has characterised this form of telepathy as MOBIA (mental or behavioural influence of an agent). Telepathy may alternatively be conceived as the reception of information about another person’s thoughts through the mediation of God or some other spiritual entity. One receives a message from God about what another person is thinking. The definition of telepathy in the glossary of the Journal of Parapsychology is different again. Here it is defined as “the paranormal acquisition of information about the thoughts, feelings, or activity of another conscious being”. By focusing on the acquisition of information, this definition implies that the receiver is the active person – for instance, someone waiting to hear about the outcome of an

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important decision tries to get the information by tapping directly into the decision maker’s mind.* It is not feasible to discuss all possible approaches to telepathy. Instead I shall limit myself to the definition of telepathy as ostensible direct mind to mind communication. This definition does not presuppose the primacy of either sender or receiver. Telepathic experiences differ substantially and I will give some examples here. They are intended for illustration only. I am not making any claim to their veracity or otherwise; this is not the focus or aim of this chapter. After citing examples of the various types of alleged telepathic experience, I will, for simplicity, limit myself to discussing just one of them throughout. In some telepathic experiences, people report that they knew at the time of their experience to whom the original thought supposedly belonged. The following experiential account is an example of this: The rest of the household had retired for the night … I knew my son would soon be in… As I lay waiting and listening for him I suddenly saw their vehicle, a light break-cart, turn over, my son jump out, land on his feet, run to the struggling horse’s head, his friend hold to the lines, and in a moment it was gone and I knew it was right and felt no disturbance. I met my son as he came in … He said: ‘We tipped over mother’. I replied ‘Yes. I know it, I saw you,’ and described what I saw as I have to you, which he said was just as it happened. … I did not see them before they started out … and I did not know in what style they went. (Sidgwick 1962, p.149).

Here, the mother apparently has a clear impression of what her son is experiencing at that moment in time, even though there is no obvious reason for her to have this precise impression. In other cases, the percipient claims to know that they are having a telepathic experience, but they do not know whose thought it is. Here is another example from Sidgwick’s (1962) collection:

*

(1976).

A longer exposition of theories about telepathy is available in Ejvegaard

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… while resting, late in the afternoon, I suddenly experienced a constrictive sensation in my throat, … which increased for some time, and finally became so distressing that I bathed and rubbed my throat several times … I could discover no cause within myself for such a sensation … It occurred to me that it might be due to some influence outside of myself, and I thought of my husband … also of a friend who was stopping with me at the time”. Later, the percipient discovers that her husband had unexpectedly had an operation performed on his throat that afternoon. (p.94).

Here, the woman understands the pain in her throat as not having anything to do with her, but at the time she is unable to attribute the experience to a specific person. In other instances of ostensible telepathy, the person does not think they are in telepathic contact until later circumstances seem to indicate that they had been. The following is a case in point: … busy and preoccupied as I was that morning, Joey Fisher suddenly, without the slightest cause or outside suggestion, obtruded himself upon my mind … I had neither seen nor heard anything of him for about a year. His face seemed to rise up before me, and the thought of him occupied my mind for a minute or two. … I thought no more about it until … a parcel containing a large pike was brought in to me from Joey Fisher. I … learned that he had caught the pike himself that day in our Reservoir, and had been standing fishing down below the road at the exact time I had passed (but quite out of sight of the road). (Sidgwick 1962, p.125)

Here, the woman clearly thinks of Joey Fisher and hence identifies the person, but she does not regard the thought as telepathic until later. There are also “motor impulse” examples, in which people appear to react physically in accordance with what they understand to be an unconsciously received telepathic impression. For instance, a woman writes: I suddenly thought of the Beethoven Trio Op. 1 No. 1 so vividly that I got up to look for the music, which I had not touched for nearly 20 years … The next day but one the enclosed card came; it had been written, as we established by subsequent correspondence, on the same evening and at the same hour.” The enclosed card read: “After playing Beethoven Op.1 No. 1 we send you hearty greetings in

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remembrance of happy hours spent together in the past. (Sidgwick 1962, pp.111112).

Here, the person appears primarily to act for no apparent reason and one could interpret this action as having been prompted by a telepathic impression from the author of the card. Because telepathic experiences are so varied in character, it is not possible to cover all possible permutations here. Thus for simplicity I will limit my discussion primarily to cases in which person X ostensibly gains a telepathic impression from person Y but in which person X does not know at the time of the experience that it was ostensibly from person Y. Consequently, I will be focusing on the example above with the woman who bathed her apparently sore throat. This type of experience neatly differentiates between having the thought and ascribing it to someone else, which is the main focus of interest for this chapter. Also for simplicity I will consider only human communication and communication between two rational people only. I will begin by outlining a characterisation of normal communication. This has two aims. First, it will make plausible the idea that our thoughts need not originate from ourselves. This should subsequently lend some initial plausibility to telepathy. Second, I will later use this specific characterisation of communication to illustrate how telepathy is a reflection, or inversion, of normal communication.

2 Communication and Perspective Communication is a necessary part of human life; most of us take it for granted. It assumes some shared basis (for communication to work) and it also assumes that there are experiences, and/or items of information, that are not shared (there is no point in me communicating to someone something that they already know). That is, communication assumes both individuality (I have a different point of view from you, both literally and metaphorically) and similarity (but we talk the same language, again both literally and meta-

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phorically). Communication is puzzling because of this tension between the different and the similar, and this tension has commonly formed the basis for constituting selfhood in respect of the Other (person). For instance, it can be seen in the Fichtean distinction between the I and the not-I, Levinas’s formulation of the Same and the Other, Sartre’s use of the Look. It is possible to divide communication into subsets. For instance, warnings differ from small talk, and communication in a tribe will differ from that at the Queen’s garden party. For my purposes I will be defining communication only as the subset that is communication in a positive Western sense (defined below) and that is between two rational human beings. This subset is the one that most closely resembles telepathy as defined here and that will therefore form the best comparison for it. Thus just as the discussion of telepathy is restricted to a specific definition and to a specific experiential type, the discussion of communication will be likewise restricted. Communication in its most positive form is between equals; in positive communication each person retains their individuality and neither limits the other. Empirically, not limiting the other means not making someone else feel awkward (e.g., limited in how they feel they can behave) or not dominating them. In the metaphysical sense, not limiting means not limiting the other person’s being (e.g., making them realise that their freedom is a limited one) and instead making potential in the other possibilities that they may not have comprehended hitherto (e.g., making them realise they are free to do otherwise if they so desire or so choose). Communication in this positive sense is based on a shared world of possibilities, a shared perspective. A perspective encompasses the assumption of the existence of the physical world, one’s current relationship to it and one’s understanding of others’ relationships to it, as well as one’s way of understanding that world and how one understands interactions to be possible or to be best conducted within it. A shared perspective is the extent to which two or more perspectives appear to overlap, relate, or connect. Thus communication in its most positive form not only does not limit the other; it has the potential to expand another person’s perspective, to further the other’s outlook (and, of course, one’s own).

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3 Communicative Interaction Communication requires there to be a person who is actively communicating – the giver – and a person with whom the giver is interacting – the receiver. The terms “giver” and “receiver” are not ideal, for “giver” suggests that the receiver is not giving (which is not the case) and vice versa. Typically, giving and receiving will take the form of speaking and listening respectively; the more general terms of giving and receiving are used here to reflect communication in a broader sense (e.g., the use of sign language with the deaf, picking up on non-verbal cues, etc.). The roles of giver and receiver are ordinarily understood to alternate, although the two roles are actually not as distinct as seems at first blush. Receiving supposes interest in the communication. Interest is aroused when both the giver and the receiver recognise that they share a perspective, at least in part. This mutual recognition is sharing. The giver needs the receiver to recognise the shared perspective if any communication is to take place at all. If the receiver is unable to share or, in negative communication, refuses to share or to accept the giver’s perspective, the giver will fail. Thus although communication may naïvely be thought of as initiated by the giver, it is the receiver’s agreement to sharing the perspective that truly engages communication. Establishing a shared perspective together is fundamental to communication. The receiver does not just receive; the receiver communicates, too. For instance, a listener can communicate with facial expressions or by gestures. This communicative aspect of receiving – largely unintentional – is an important feature of communication. If a giver is faced with no response from the receiver, they may regard their communication as having failed. People who are physically unable to make facial expressions report themselves as feeling isolated and as being misunderstood (Cole 1997). That is, in order to facilitate sharing, the receiver also has to be a giver. Receiving involves putting oneself into what is communicated – weaving it into one’s own perspective and weaving it into one’s understanding of the other’s perspective, which one can understand to the extent that it is re-

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lated to one’s own. Receiving is also the demonstration – either verbally or non-verbally – of that integration. Roughly, receiving involves taking on board what the person has communicated, understanding it within the perspective that has been established, this latter perspective being related in some way to one’s own, and understanding not only what has been communicated but also its implications for oneself and for the other (as appropriate). Receiving as part of communication entails demonstrating that understanding in some way by giving back, ideally at the same time as receiving. Communication is a meeting and meshing of perspectives and also a meeting and meshing of the giving and receiving roles in that perspective. This brief characterisation of receiving suggests a need for some similarity of perspective for communication in a positive sense to take place. It also indicates that receiving is not a passive role. The receiver is at the same time a giver. Strictly speaking, it is neither receiving nor giving for it is engagement in sharing a perspective. Likewise, the giver is not entirely distinct from the receiver. The giver might look for feedback – e.g., an interested look on the receiver’s face, appropriate gestures etc. – to confirm that a perspective has been shared. This confirmation is a form of receiving. Communication is easier the more the giver and the receiver share perspectives, the more the two merge. Although sketchy, this characterisation of communicative interaction shows that the distinction between giver and receiver may not be clear cut. Giving involves receiving and receiving involves giving. Moreover, if communication in the sense described here involves incorporating at least part of what one understands to be another person’s perspective into one’s own – e.g., taking on board another person’s point of view – the distinction between the perspectives will become obscured. That is, my integration of that view into my own perspective will form a further point at which we can test the extent to which our perspectives merge. And if I embrace the other person’s view, whether that view is mine or that of the other person becomes ambiguous. The aim of this preliminary outline is not to provide a cohesive account of communication. Rather, it is to introduce the idea of a shared perspective,

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and to show that a shared perspective is a foundational aspect of communication. In normal communication this shared perspective is engaged by the receiver, and the giver seeks confirmation that this engagement has taken place. Ultimately, the roles of giver and receiver merge to some extent. This outline should therefore give some credence to the idea that the content of one’s thoughts may not necessarily originate from oneself. As a result, the following question, which forms the main interest of this paper, is a natural consequence.

4 How Do I Know that this Thought is Mine? This question is not one of how I can know that all thoughts belong to the same self; it is the more primary one of how I come to think of any given thought as belonging to me rather than to someone else. To answer this question, this section has two goals. The first goal is to show that we can indeed doubt that our thoughts are our own. The second goal is to determine the necessary criteria for attributing thought ownership. So: How can I doubt that this thought is mine? If I am a normal person who has had positive communicative interactions with other normal people, my thoughts will have been influenced by my social milieu and by the people with whom I have had interactions. Some thoughts I may possibly never have had were it not for my interactions with others. My thoughts, therefore, need not originate from myself. To some extent my thoughts are a product of society and of the perspective(s) from which they have been formed. But perhaps my thoughts do originate from myself; perhaps only the content of those thoughts does not. But without content, it is debatable whether there is a thought at all. Meditative states in which a person attempts to clear their mind might be regarded as an example of thought without con-

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tent. But clearing one’s head of content is commonly understood to be the same as clearing one’s head of thoughts. At first blush, if the content of a thought does not originate from me, I cannot regard it as my thought and if a thought has no content, I cannot regard myself as properly having a thought at all. On a naïve level, I regard thoughts as my thoughts if they are inside my head, so to speak. That is, even if the content does not originate from me, I regard it as my thought because it is in my head. However, in the case of telepathy a person identifies a thought as being in their head but as not being their thought. For instance, in the example above of the woman bathing her throat, the woman’s throat felt sore despite the fact that she knew it was not. Consequently, she tried to find someone else from whom that thought or sensation came. Although the thought was in her head, she did not think it was her thought. If one argues, again, that she is merely denying the content of that thought as her own, it becomes ambiguous as to precisely what it is that she is calling her own. Thus it appears that the being-in-my-headness of a thought is not a sufficient criterion for me to think that a given thought is mine. What is more important is that I should regard the thought as originating from me. Possibly a thought is mine if it is integrated into my perspective. For instance, in the telepathy example the woman presumably thought it was odd that she had a constricted feeling in her throat because it did not make any sense from her current perspective – she was healthy, otherwise occupied, and had no reason to have that thought. In thinking it odd that she should have such a thought, the thought then became the subject of her thoughts, just as a prior thought of any kind can become the subject of further thoughts. She is not debating her husband’s mental impressions; she is debating her own feeling of being unwell when she was not. The thought is hers only to the extent that she debates it in her head and wonders about it – to the extent that she tries to integrate it into her perspective. The importance of a thought being integrated into one’s perspective for thought ownership can be clarified further by considering inspirational thoughts. Inspirational thoughts often come unbidden and seem to appear

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from somewhere other than oneself. Yet an inspirational thought is inspirational only if the person later applies it in some way; it becomes my inspiration to the extent that I work with it, integrate it into my perspective and draw new connections using that inspiration. A telepathic experience, however, is in part regarded as telepathic because the individual cannot sensibly integrate the content of that thought into their perspective. For instance, the woman can find no reason for having the sensation in her throat and the sensation itself appears to be redundant – for example, it is not warning her of an impending cold. The soreness in her throat cannot be expanded or drawn upon in her life. Thus a telepathic experience is believed not to be one’s own because one cannot integrate it. An inspirational thought, however, becomes one’s own thought because one can integrate and work with it. Thus something can be regarded as my thought on two accounts. First, I can regard a thought as my thought because I believe I was the originator of the content of that thought. Second, I consider a thought to be my thought because I can integrate it into my perspective. In the following I will argue that both origination and integration are required for someone to claim that a thought is one’s own. I will start by considering normal communication. Normal communication casts doubt on whether origination of thought content alone is sufficient for someone to claim ownership of that thought. In normal communication the contents of my thoughts originate from society insofar as my social interactions have been responsible for the thoughts I have. The contents of these thoughts are nevertheless mine to the extent that I integrate them into my perspective. Consequently, I can still make a thought content mine by integrating it into my perspective. Here, ownership of the thought becomes obscure because although the thought content does not originate from me, I have nevertheless integrated it into my perspective. That is, ownership of the thought is ambiguous because only one of the conditions for ownership (origination of content) is undermined, whilst the other (integration into one’s perspective) holds true. Here, ownership is merely obscure; it is not wholly denied. Telepathic communication casts doubt on whether the integration of a thought into one’s perspective is sufficient for someone to claim ownership of

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that thought. Normally, when I say that a thought is my thought, I mean both that it appears to me phenomenologically to be in my head and that it has been integrated into my perspective. When a telepathic experience first appears in someone’s consciousness though, such as the woman who felt she had a sore throat when she does not, the experience is in her head but she does not have a perspective for it. She can integrate the thought by wondering about it, but this still does not necessarily make the original thought (the sore throat) her own. Thus what telepathic experiences appear to do is to cause a conflict between the being-in-my-headness of a thought and its integration and this conflict makes the integration of the telepathic thought ambiguous. Telepathy points to the underlying assumption that the being-in-my-headness of a thought itself is a phenomenological expression of the need for origination and integration of a thought before one can regard a thought as one’s own. By casting doubt on the integration of the thought, telepathy casts doubt on its ownership, too, and consequently, on its being-in-my-headness (now understood primarily as origination) as well. That is, in telepathy ownership of a thought becomes obscure because one of the conditions for ownership (integration) is undermined and as a result the other (origination) remains unclear. The thought is in my head but I cannot integrate it and thus I am not sure if I own it. Telepathy raises doubts as to whether thoughts in my head can necessarily be integrated into my perspective; my normal communicative interactions raise doubts as to whether the contents of the thoughts I have integrated originate from me. Normal communication ultimately questions the origination of thoughts; telepathy ultimately questions the integration of thoughts. Origination and integration form the basis of thought ownership and to the extent that normal and telepathic communication question one or other of these bases for thought ownership, both forms of communication can call into question whether a particular thought is properly mine.

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5 How can I Deny that this Thought is Mine? Although I have argued that origination and integration are necessary for attributing ownership to a thought, and although I have shown that normal and telepathic communication can call into question whether a thought is mine by questioning origination and integration, respectively, at this stage neither normal communication nor telepathy raise enough doubt for me to forcibly deny that a given thought is my own. There is ambiguity of ownership, but not denial of it. It is this subsequent denial of a thought as being one’s own that renders telepathy particularly interesting. This section will examine this additional aspect in some detail. In so doing I will be drawing extensively on the outline of positive communication that I gave above to show how telepathy of the kind discussed here is the inverse of normal communication. I have argued that a person denies a telepathic experience as their own because that thought does not fit in with the perspective of the rest of their mental life and because the person cannot integrate it into that perspective. Nevertheless, even if a thought initially appears not to fit in with one’s perspective, that thought does not have to be interpreted as telepathic. This was illustrated by the example of inspirational thoughts. Inspirational thoughts originally appear to come from outwith one’s own perspective. Thus initial lack of perspective alone is not a sufficient reason for someone to deny a thought as their own. In fact, an experience that does not initially seem to fit in with one’s own perspective is characterised as telepathic only once the experiencer believes for some reason that the thought belongs to another person. Nevertheless, this additional criterion of having a reason to believe that a thought belongs to someone else before one can deny an experience as one’s own means that a rational person can identify a thought as not their own (i.e., here, as telepathic) only once they are aware of the other person’s perspective. If the woman had never discovered that her husband had had a throat operation that day, she would probably have dismissed her experience as an illusion.

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This has a number of repercussions. First, the roles between giver and receiver seem to be reversed in telepathic communication. In my earlier characterisation of normal communication, the receiver engaged the act of communication. If no-one agrees to share a perspective, no communication will take place. The giver implicitly seeks confirmation that their words or gestures are being received (i.e., integrated) by looking at the other person’s face, watching their reactions etc. In telepathic communication, though, it is the receiver who seeks confirmation. Only once an appropriate perspective is found – here, the husband having the throat operation – can the woman place what she has received into a perspective. To this extent telepathic communication is the reverse of normal communication. In normal communication I receive another’s communication and then take it on board by incorporating it appropriately into my own mental life; in telepathy, as characterised here, I allegedly have another person’s thought in my own mental life, but only later can I attribute it to the other person. In normal communication the giver looks for confirmation that their communication has been received; in telepathy the receiver looks for confirmation that the communication was given. Thus telepathic thoughts of this type are experienced as perspective independent communication – that is, the received thought is initially devoid of any known perspective. One makes sense of the experience by understanding it as that of another person. Only when someone understands the other person’s perspective do they understand the experience as telepathic, and in understanding the other person’s perspective, the perspective becomes shared and telepathy also becomes understood as a kind of communication. Again, this is the reverse of my description of normal communication. In normal communication the receiver engages by understanding the shared perspective first and only later (perhaps) offering their view as distinct; in telepathic communication the receiver has a thought that has no currently known perspective and only later does the receiver understand its proper perspective as being that of another person and that therefore that perspective is now shared. Normal communication begins with thoughts placed in a shared perspective; telepathy starts from a thought that is independent of perspective.

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A second consequence of needing to attribute another person’s perspective as more fitting for the thought before one can regard the thought as not one’s own is that often there will be a time lag between one’s having the experience and one’s understanding it, here, as a telepathic experience. For a while one may not be able to find a perspective for the experience at all. If integrating one’s own thoughts into a perspective is part and parcel of determining whether a thought is one’s own, then if finding that perspective is delayed, so too is one’s ability to know whether that thought is one’s own, even if that thought is in one’s head. That is, the later knowledge that her husband had had a throat operation encourages the wife to interpret her experience as telepathic; at the time of her experience, though, the experience retains some ambiguity. She asks herself: Is it her thought? Is it her husband’s thought? Is it her friend’s thought? Information that does not fit at the time of the experience is put on hold until it can be fitted in to a perspective or discarded. I have argued that one can deny that a thought in one’s head is one’s own if one finds that another person’s perspective better fits that thought. Before one can find the perspective, the thought is merely ambiguous as to ownership. Yet denying a thought in one’s head is more peculiar than one might imagine from the description I have given so far. Normally, in cases in which there is some doubt as to whose thought a given thought is (e.g., in cases of plagiarism), one may turn to determining the perspective around which that person embedded the thought to see if there are reasonable grounds for thinking that this person could have had this thought independently or that the person had applied the thought in a novel (and hence not necessarily plagiaristic) way. Thus, in normal communication, too, the perspectival integration of the thought enables a person to agree (or deny) that a particular thought belongs to a particular (other) person. What is unusual in the telepathy case, though, is that an individual denies that a thought that is in their own head is their own. This individual, too, uses perspective, or lack of it, to determine whether the thought in their head is theirs or someone else’s. For instance, the woman cannot integrate the sore throat into her own perspective, but she can see a perspective for it in her husband’s life. And because thought ownership requires both integration and origination, in assigning the proper integration of

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that thought as belonging to her husband’s perspective, she will presumably also in some sense assume that her husband was the originator of the thought. The thought in her head thus becomes understood as her husband’s thought. Similarly, in plagiarism, if one can find a perspective from which a person could reasonably have independently, and sufficiently richly, integrated the allegedly plagiarised thought, the integration is sufficient indication that the thought was not really plagiarised. Consequently one assumes that this person also originated the thought too in a sufficiently rich sense. The telepathic instance is strange because a technique for assigning thoughts to others from a third-person perspective (querying that perspective) is used in cases of alleged telepathy from an essentially first-person perspective (querying one’s own perspective). Again, telepathy masquerades as an inverse form of communication. In normal communication usually one knows first-person if a thought in one’s head is one’s own; it is usually the thoughts of others that are in doubt. In certain cases of telepathy, however, one views the so-called telepathic thought from the third-person perspective; it is a thought that is in one’s own head that one doubts is one’s own. That is, in telepathy one questions whether a thought in one’s head is necessarily a first-person one, whereas in normal communication one can question whether another person’s thought is really theirs. The difficulty with telepathy might be thought to stem from reflection upon a thought. Normally, as we reflect upon any thought of ours, we regard this act of reflection as an objectification of that thought. The thought thereby becomes alienated from us because, as we reflect upon it, we try to strip it of the perspective in which we normally situate it. We try to understand that thought from other possible perspectives. The thought consequently loses a specific perspective and hence also to a certain extent loses its specificity of ownership. What is peculiar in reflection upon a possibly telepathic thought is that the thought is not stripped of its own perspective, but rather the reverse. The telepathic thought is initially without a known perspective, but on reflection is assigned one (e.g., it was the husband’s pain the woman felt). Hence the thought is assigned an ownership that had not been assigned to it before. In acquiring a perspective, a telepathic experience is regarded as subjective

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because the thought is understood as situated within that specific perspective and as first-person from that perspective. In normal communication a thought is received (heard) by me and is to a certain extent objectified (i.e., placed in a shared, or shareable, rather than particular, perspective) to enable that reception; in telepathic communication a thought without perspective, or at least with an unattributed perspective, is led back to another person and thereby becomes subjectified. Yet, though different, telepathic and normal communication do share similarities. Often the alleged telepathic thought is not identical to the other person’s thought – for instance, it is unlikely that the husband had merely a constricted feeling in his throat (he presumably had an anaesthetic or otherwise his throat probably felt far worse) – yet the thoughts are similar enough for a connection to be made. This is similar to normal communication where people’s perspectives have to be similar enough to engage communication, but not necessarily identical. Communication assumes similarity and difference, and so does telepathy. In telepathy two people originally have different perspectives but have a similar thought content, only one of which is located in an appropriate perspective. In normal communication two people have a similar perspective, but differing thought content. When telepathy is successful, the perspective, too, becomes established and shared; when normal communication is successful, thought content, too, becomes shared. I have argued that for me to say that a thought is mine, I need to say both that I originated the thought and that I have integrated it. If either integration or origination is in doubt, so too is my claim to ownership of that thought. Nevertheless, my ownership is only in doubt; it is not denied as such. In this section I have claimed that to deny a thought as mine, I must additionally ascribe that thought to someone else. In instances of alleged telepathy, a person denies a thought as theirs by understanding it as better integrated into another person’s perspective (and as not at all fitting with their own). By understanding the thought as integrated into another person’s perspective, the other person also comes to be understood as the originator of the thought. Thus telepathy starts by questioning integration (it does not fit into my perspective) and proceeds by integrating that thought elsewhere. The ascription

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of the origination of the thought to the person in whose perspective the thought is integrated then naturally follows. Whereas telepathy initially questions integration, normal communication initially questions origination. In normal communication if I deny that thought content originates from me, I claim that this content originated from someone else. In academic discourse this claim is common – one refers to the sources from which one is drawing and hence one implicitly stresses that this particular thought (content) was not strictly speaking one’s own. In this claim there is the implicit understanding that the person who is said to have originated the thought content also had that thought in their own perspective, just as in telepathy assigning the integration to someone else resulted in one also believing the thought originated from that person. Normal and telepathic communication exhibit the same relations, but in reverse.

6 Concluding Comments I claim that normal communication starts out from a shared perspective, whereas alleged telepathic communication starts out from shared thought content. Normal communication breaks down the distinction of who owns particular thought content; telepathic communication breaks down the distinction between perspectives of thought. Yet, at another level, normal communication and telepathic communication are the same. Owning or ascribing a thought to someone requires one to ascribe origination and integration of the thought to one person. Normal communication and telepathy both ultimately establish a shared perspective and they both break down the distinction between the giver and the receiver. It is just the direction of the process that is different. Telepathy begins by promoting an initial ambiguity as to who is the giver and who is the receiver, and between a first and third person view, and it ends by establishing a shared perspective. Normal communication begins by establishing a shared perspective and subsequently merges the roles of giver and receiver as the communication progresses.

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Most academics, contrary to the general population, do not accept the possibility of telepathy* and, yet, normal communication is itself just as mysterious as telepathy. It is difficult to understand why normal communication is necessary unless one assumes some privacy of thought, i.e., unless one assumes that not all thoughts have been communicated and that some thoughts remain unknown to others. Where are these private thoughts located? The natural answer to give is that they are in my head/brain. Yet normal communication suggests that there is some doubt as to whether at least the content of any thought can be regarded as truly my own, for thoughts are influenced by the external – for instance, either by other people’s views or by the physical world. If one separates out thought content from a thought in one’s head and one claims that I can know the being-in-my-headness of my thought, one returns to the problem of location, the mysteriousness of this privacy and its general lack of philosophical viability. The claim to knowing the being-inmy-headness of my thought applies only to the fact that one has integrated it into a perspective; one’s doubt is based on the recognition that at least some of the content of that perspective has come from without. The problem with discussing thought ownership is that it encourages us to think of thoughts as having a location, or as some kind of object that exists somewhere in space. By discussing thought ownership in terms of communication, one can think of a thought as part of a network, or a process. I have claimed that thought ownership involves integration and origination of that thought. Integration and origination usually occur hand in hand. In the act of integrating a thought, I come to understand it as originating from me, at least if I have integrated it to some sufficiently rich extent. The integration places that thought into my perspective and hence I feel it becomes mine. Likewise, origination often implies integration. For instance, if I originate a thought content, very often it will originate from my perspective and hence be integrated into that perspective, too. Because of the close relationship between origination and integration, it can be unclear whether a thought has originated from oneself or been integrated into one’s perspective; the problematic high*

See Edge, Morris, Palmer & Rush (1986), pp.371-2, for an overview of survey findings.

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lighted by normal and telepathic communication shows that origination and integration are nevertheless distinct. Coming to own a thought is similar to entering a dialogue with oneself. Integrating a thought is its reception into one’s perspective, its origination is the giving out of its content. The distinction between origination and integration is not always clear, just as the giver-receiver distinction was also ambiguous at times. Yet one cannot enter this dialogue with oneself, one cannot come to own a thought, without presupposing the ability to communicate. One has to appreciate other perspectives before one can contrast them to one’s own, before one can think of oneself as an originator, or before one can think of a thought as integrated into one’s own perspective. Because ownership of a thought presupposes – and is hence influenced by – communication, ownership of thought is necessarily always ambiguous, despite the phenomenological certainty that one has of one’s ownership of one’s thoughts – of privacy of thought.* Ownership is ambiguous because thought always has already been influenced by others. The “hard question” may not be that of how the world, my brain, and other people’s views that are communicated to me, all mesh together to provide me with what I phenomenologically come to regard as a thought from a perspective that I alone have; the truly hard question may be quite different. Namely, if we understand a thought not as an object but as part of a network of interactions, why do there appear to be informational barriers? That is, someone who holds the view that a thought is a networked process in the physical world ought to be theoretically sympathetic to the possibility of telepathy, for a network suggests that there could be some, perhaps circuitous, route to gaining information elsewhere in that network by means other than those usually used. Thus, although telepathy appears to be implausible to many, this may in part be due to a failure to recognise that our claim to have thoughts that we call solely our own is itself implausible. Attempts to account for our claim to *

Jaynes (1976) argues that millennia ago there were merely voices that had to be obeyed rather than people having thoughts that they understood as belonging to themselves.

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have our own thoughts may either rest on grounds that are just as mysterious as telepathy (e.g., on the privacy of thought) or on grounds that would actually theoretically render telepathy possible (e.g., by hypothesising a network) and/or that would otherwise fail to stipulate why there are barriers to certain information transfers. The possibility of telepathy opens up some central issues for the philosophy of mind. It appears that to think a thought is mine requires this thought to be embedded in a perspective and I also need to be able to understand that there are other perspectives that I can share. I need to understand that these other perspectives exist if I am to be able to differentiate myself from others and my thoughts from those of other people. Consequently, thinking a thought as mine networks thought in a larger sphere. The ability to communicate suggests that this sphere is larger than just me alone, perhaps a network. If telepathy were possible, it would suggest that relations can work in the reverse way to which we are normally accustomed – they are reflected back and inverted. Similarly, the content can be reflected before the perspective; in telepathy I find a short-cut to another’s content without first needing to get the map. Thus, perhaps the network is like a hall of mirrors, each mirror reflecting a slightly different aspect of the same world and some mirrors occasionally reflecting their content directly to other distant mirrors if those mirrors momentarily shift in an unusual and yet advantageous way. Of course, if this metaphoric shift is an unusual one, this suggests that telepathy is not the norm and that usually the illusion of privacy is retained. The challenge for the philosophy of mind that telepathy raises is either to show why communication is limited, why certain thoughts are totally inaccessible to others, or to take on the possibility of telepathy. The surprise may be that assuming the latter may be the same as assuming its reverse.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Bob Morris and the Durham University Philosophy Society for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am also grateful to the Perrott-Warwick and the Bial Foundations, whose funding supported this work.

References Bem, D.J. & Honorton, C. (1994). Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 115: 4-18. Cole, J. (1997). On ‘Being Faceless’: Selfhood and Facial Embodiment. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4: 467-484. Edge, H.L., Morris, R.L., Palmer, J., & Rush, J.H. (1986). Foundations of Parapsychology. Exploring the Boundaries of Human Capability. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ejvegaard, R. (1976). A Philosophical Analysis of Telepathy. In Shapin, B., & Coly, L. (Eds). The Philosophy of Parapsychology. Proceedings of an International Conference. New York: Parapsychology Foundation Inc. Jaynes, J. (1976). The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Milton, J. & Wiseman, R. (1999). Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 125: 387-391. Sidgwick, E.M. (1962). Phantasms of the Living. Cases of Telepathy Printed in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research during Thirty-five Years and Phantasms of the Living (by Gurney, E., Myers, F.W.H., & Podmore, F.). Edited and Abridged by Sidgwick, E.M. New York: University Books Inc.

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Stanford, R.G. (1974). An Experimentally Testable Model for Spontaneous Psi Events. II. Psychokinetic Events. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 68: 321356. Storm, L., & Ertel, S. (2001). Does Psi Exist? A Re-appraisal of Milton and Wiseman’s (1999) Meta-analysis of Ganzfeld Research. Psychological Bulletin, 127: 424-433.

The Dimensions of Conscious Experience: A Quantitative Phenomenology Steven Lehar

1 Introduction Psychology was originally formulated as the science of the psyche, i.e. the scientific investigation of the subjective side of the mind / brain barrier. The study of conscious experience therefore is the principal domain of psychology, and neurophysiology only enters into the picture to provide a physical substrate for mind. Over the years two distinct methodologies have emerged for the study of conscious experience, phenomenology and psychophysics. Each approach has its particular strengths and weaknesses, although in recent decades the phenomenological approach has fallen largely into disuse and even a certain disrepute. The reasons for this are complex, but ultimately unjustified (Varela & Shear 1999), for phenomenology is not only a perfectly valid and legitimate method of investigation, it is an indispensable component of the science of psychology. The recent neglect of this avenue of investigation has led psychology far astray from the original goal of a scientific study of conscious experience. It was this diversion of psychology from its original objective that has necessitated the creation of the new science of consciousness studies. There is a subtle distinction between the terms phenomenology and introspection, which are otherwise almost synonymous. Phenomenology is the older term, and involves a temporary suspension of belief in the objective world in order to concentrate on the phenomenon of experience in and of itself. Introspection involves contemplation of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and sensations. However the latter term has become associated with the Introspectionist, or Structuralist movement (Wundt 1897, Titchener 1928) whose

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stated objective was to study the structure of conscious experience. This more specific variation of Introspection (capitalized here to distinguish it from introspection in general) marked the birth of psychology as a science distinct from philosophy and biology. However from the outset certain methodological problems emerged which have contributed to its current demise. There has always been a problem of objectivity with phenomenological observation, for the observer cannot help but focus on aspects of the conscious experience which are consistent with their preconceived notions or theoretical expectations. This does not invalidate the practice when exercised with the proper caution, but it is a constant danger to which the phenomenological observer must remain eternally vigilant. The classical Introspectionists began with the assumption that all levels of perceptual processing should be available to introspective observation, from the raw sensory experience through the higher cognitive understanding of that experience. They expected therefore that the most basic or elemental components of consciousness should be similar dimensionally to the raw sensory input. In order to begin the investigation from the bottom up, the Introspectionists placed great emphasis on training the Introspective observer to focus specifically on the elements of the conscious experience, and to ignore the higher order inferences by which they were supposedly bound. For example the retinal image is known to be two-dimensional, and therefore the Introspective observer was trained to ignore the three-dimensional component of the visual experience and to focus on its two-dimensional projection. However this kind of Intospection is not a true introspection, because the results depend on those initial assumptions. For even a casual inspection reveals the world of perception to be fundamentally three-dimensional, and it is only by an effort of self-delusion that it can possibly be seen as primarily a two- dimensional projection. The Gestalt movement introduced a new approach to phenomenology that relied heavily on the visual illusions observed when viewing certain graphical figures. The principal finding of Gestalt theory was that the perceptual experience due to a figure is not a simple sum of the effects of its individual components, but that global configural factors are involved in perception that defy the kind of atomistic or elemental analysis proposed by the

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Introspectionists. In particular, Gestalt theory demonstrated that the world of perception is fundamentally three-dimensional, and that therefore the third dimension was not due to any kind of cognitive inference based on two-dimensional elements, but the three-dimensional nature of the percept is primary, and is manifest even at the lowest or most immediate levels of conscious experience. It takes considerable practice for an artist to learn to extract the two-dimensional projection from a three-dimensional scene, as required to produce a perspective sketch, because it is very difficult to ignore the threedimensional component of the visual world. It is the two-dimensional projection therefore that must be inferred from the three-dimensional percept, rather than the other way round. The great disparity between the conscious experience and the sensory input on which it is based suggests that there is a considerable amount of visual processing that occurs below the level of consciousness, where the two-dimensional sensory input is transformed into the three-dimensional percept. Despite these significant achievements of Gestalt phenomenology, the disparity between the phenomenal observations of these different schools of psychology eventually led to a general indictment of phenomenology and introspection as hopelessly subjective and impossible to verify objectively. The methodology of psychophysics was devised specifically to avoid the problem of observer subjectivity by using naïve subjects who are not informed of the theoretical significance of the experiment, with perceptual tasks limited to simple discriminations or judgements that can be reduced to a simple keypress response. Theoretical techniques have been borrowed from signal detection theory in order to eliminate any residual bias due to experimental protocol, and statistical techniques have been refined for rigorous analysis of the results. However the psychophysical method suffers from a major limitation, which is that the rich conscious experience simply cannot be communicated through the bottleneck of the simple keypress response. As a result, an impoverished view of the nature of perceptual processing has emerged in contemporary psychology that ignores some of the most prominent aspects of perception which are plainly manifest in the subjective conscious experience.

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Despite these problems a great deal of useful knowledge has been gained both from the phenomenological and the psychophysical approaches. The two methodologies are somewhat complementary, for phenomenology offers initial insights into the general nature of conscious processes, while psychophysics offers a more objective means to settle issues of contention raised by the phenomenological observations. The one is more qualitative, and offers a big-picture overview, while the other is more quantitative, and measures the particulars with greater precision and reliability. The strong bias seen in recent decades in favour of the quantitative approach is a reflection of a general ‘physics envy’ in psychology that attempts to avoid the fuzzy subjective aspect of the science in order to place psychology on a more rigorous scientific footing. It was this same pursuit of scientific rigor that motivated the Behaviourist movement, for there is more certainty and objectivity in behavior observed from the outside than in subjective reports of the conscious experience from the inside. But in the pursuit of scientific rigor, the Behaviourists threw out the baby with the bath water, and the most extreme proponents of Behaviorism even denied the very existence of a subjective conscious experience. However a psychology that fails to account for the conscious experience is a psychology that essentially explains nothing, for it has lost sight of the original objectives of the science. Fortunately the excesses of the Behaviourist movement are now generally recognized, and the cognitive revolution has begun to swing the pendulum back towards a recognition of the validity of a science of conscious experience. The lesson from the Behaviourists’ error is that the troublesome philosophical issues underlying the study of conscious experience cannot be avoided by simply ignoring them. Rather, these issues must be clearly identified and confronted head-on. But we are not yet out of the woods, for once again the science of psychology is being diverted from its primary objective, again in the interests of supposed scientific rigor. This time the lure has been advances in neurophysiological recording technology, especially the single-cell electrode. This again seems to promise a more objective third-person approach to the investigation of the elusive psyche. However the picture of sensory processing revealed by

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neurophysiology is so divergent from the dimensions of conscious experience as observed phenomenologically, that once again we are exhorted by modern neuroreductionists to deny the very existence of the conscious experience as being some kind of illusion which has no objective reality (Dennett 1991). However the real motivation behind this denial of consciousness is ultimately neurophysiological, for the properties of consciousness are a constant embarrassment to our neurophysiological theories of sensory processing. It would be very convenient for neural network theorists if consciousness were simply excluded from the set of data to be explained by psychology.

2 The Epistemological Divide There is a central philosophical confusion underlying discussions of phenomenal experience, which explains why the very existence of conscious experience is so often denied as an objective reality. That is the epistemological question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself, or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by neural processes in our brain. In other words this is the question of direct realism, also known as naïve realism, as opposed to indirect realism, or representationalism. Although this issue is not much discussed in contemporary psychology, it is an old debate that has resurfaced several times, but the continued failure to reach consensus on this issue continues to bedevil the debate on the functional role of sensory processing. The reason for the continued confusion is that both direct and indirect realism are frankly incredible, although each is incredible for different reasons.

3 Problems with Direct Realism The direct realist view (Gibson 1972) is incredible because it suggests that we can have experience of objects out in the world directly, beyond the sensory surface, as if bypassing the chain of sensory processing. For example

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if light from this paper is transduced by your retina into a neural signal which is transmitted from your eye to your brain, then the very first aspect of the paper that you can possibly experience is the information at the retinal surface, or the perceptual representation that it stimulates in your brain. The physical paper itself lies beyond the sensory surface and therefore must be beyond your direct experience. But the perceptual experience of the page stubbornly appears out in the world itself instead of in your brain, in apparent violation of everything we know about the causal chain of vision. The difficulty with the concept of direct perception is most clearly seen when considering how an artificial vision system could be endowed with such external perception. Although a sensor may record an external quantity in an internal register or variable in a computer, from the internal perspective of the software running on that computer, only the internal value of that variable can be “seen”, or can possibly influence the operation of that software. In exactly analogous manner the pattern of electrochemical activity that corresponds to our conscious experience can take a form that reflects the properties of external objects, but our consciousness is necessarily confined to the experience of those internal effigies of external objects, rather than of external objects themselves. Unless the principle of direct perception can be demonstrated in a simple artificial sensory system, this explanation remains as mysterious as the property of consciousness it is supposed to explain.

4 Problems with Indirect Realism The indirect realist view is also incredible, for it suggests that the solid stable structure of the world that we perceive to surround us is merely a pattern of energy in our physical brain, i.e. that the world that appears to be external to our head is actually inside our head. This could only mean that the head we have come to know as our own is not our true physical head, but is merely a miniature perceptual copy of our head inside a perceptual copy of the world, all of which is completely contained within our true physical skull. Stated from the internal phenomenal perspective, out beyond the farthest

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things you can perceive in all directions, i.e. above the dome of the sky and below the earth under your feet, or beyond the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room you perceive around you, beyond those perceived surfaces is the inner surface of your true physical skull encompassing all that you perceive, and beyond that skull is an unimaginably immense external world, of which the world you see around you is merely a miniature virtual-reality replica. The external world and its phenomenal replica cannot be spatially superimposed, for one is inside your physical head, and the other is outside. Therefore the vivid spatial structure of this page that you perceive here in your hands is itself a pattern of activation within your physical brain, and the real paper of which it is a copy it out beyond your direct experience. Although this statement can only be true in a topological, rather than a strict topographical sense, this insight emphasizes the indisputable fact that no aspect of the external world can possibly appear in consciousness except by being represented explicitly in the brain. The existential vertigo occasioned by this concept of perception is so disorienting that only a handful of researchers have seriously entertained this notion or pursued its implications to its logical conclusion. (Kant 1781/1991, Koffka 1935, Köhler 1971, p. 125, Russell 1927, pp. 137143, Smythies 1989, 1994, Harrison 1989, Hoffman 1998) Another reason why the indirect realist view is incredible is that the observed properties of the world of experience when viewed from the indirect realist perspective are difficult to resolve with contemporary concepts of neurocomputation. For the world we perceive around us appears as a solid spatial structure that maintains its structural integrity as we turn around and move about in the world. Perceived objects within that world maintain their structural integrity and recognized identity as they rotate, translate, and scale by perspective in their motions through the world. These properties of the conscious experience fly in the face of everything we know about neurophysiology, for they suggest some kind of three-dimensional imaging mechanism in the brain, capable of generating three-dimensional volumetric percepts of the degree of detail and complexity observed in the world around us, that appear to rotate and translate freely relative to the space in which they appear. No plausible mechanism has ever been identified neurophysiologically that ex-

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hibits this incredible property. The properties of the phenomenal world are therefore inconsistent with contemporary concepts of neural processing, which is exactly why these properties have been so long ignored.

5 Problems with Projection Theory There is a third alternative besides the direct and indirect realist views, and that is a projection theory, whereby the brain does indeed process sensory input, but that the results of that processing get somehow projected back out of the brain to be superimposed back on the external world (Ruch 1950 quoted in Smythies 1954, O’Shaughnessy 1980, pp. 168- 192, Velmans 1990, Baldwin 1992). According to this view, the world around us is part real, and part perceptual construction, and the two are spatially superimposed. However no physical mechanism has ever been proposed to account for this external projection. The problem with this notion becomes clear when considering how an artificial intelligence could possibly be endowed with this kind of external projection. Although a sensor may record an external quantity in an internal register or variable in a computer, there is no sense in which that internal value can be considered to be external to that register or to the physical machine itself, whether detected externally with an electrical probe, or examined internally by software data access. Unless the principle of external projection can be demonstrated in a simple artificial sensory system, this explanation too remains as mysterious as the property of consciousness it is supposed to explain.

6 Selection from Incredible Alternatives We are left therefore with a choice between three alternatives, each of which appears to be absolutely incredible. Contemporary neuroscience seems to take something of an equivocal position on this issue, recognizing the epistemological limitations of the direct realist view and of the projection hy-

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pothesis, while being unable to account for the incredible properties suggested by the indirect realist view. However one of these three alternatives simply must be true, to the exclusion of the other two. And the issue is by no means inconsequential, for these opposing views suggest very different ideas of the function of visual processing, or what all that neural wetware is supposed to actually do. Therefore it is of central importance for psychology to address this issue head-on, and to determine which of these competing hypotheses reflect the truth of visual processing. For until this most central issue is resolved definitively, psychology is condemned to remain in what Kuhn (1970) calls a pre-paradigmatic state, with different camps arguing at crosspurposes due to a lack of consensus on the foundational assumptions and methodologies of the science. The problem with the direct realist view is of an epistemological nature, and is therefore a more fundamental objection, for direct realism is nothing short of magical, that we can see the world out beyond the sensory surface. The projection theory has a similar epistemological problem, and is equally magical and mysterious, suggesting that neural processes in our brain are somehow also out in the world. Both of these paradigms have difficulty with phenomena of dreams and hallucinations (Revonsuo 1995), which present the same kind of phenomenal experience as spatial vision, except independently of the external world in which that perception is supposed to occur in normal vision. It is the implicit or explicit acceptance of this naïve concept of perception that has led many to conclude that consciousness is deeply mysterious and forever beyond human comprehension. For example Searle (1992) contends that consciousness is impossible to observe, for when we attempt to observe consciousness we see nothing but whatever it is that we are conscious of; that there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed. The problem with the indirect realist view on the other hand is more of a technological or computational limitation, for we cannot imagine how contemporary concepts of neurocomputation, or even artificial computation for that matter, can account for the properties of perception as observed in visual consciousness. It is clear however that we have yet to discover the most fundamental principles of neural computation and representation, and therefore

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we cannot allow our currently limited notions of neurocomputation to constrain our observations of the nature of visual consciousness. The phenomena of dreams and hallucinations clearly demonstrate that the brain is capable of generating vivid spatial percepts of a surrounding world independent of that external world, and that capacity must be a property of the physical mechanism of the brain. Normal conscious perception can therefore be characterized as a guided hallucination (Revonsuo 1995), which is as much a matter of active construction as it is of passive detection. If we accept the truth of indirect realism, this immediately disposes of at least one mysterious or miraculous component of consciousness, which is its unobservability. For in that case consciousness is indeed observable, contrary to Searle’s contention, because the objects of experience are first and foremost the product or “output” of consciousness, and only in secondary fashion are they also representative of objects in the external world. Searle’s difficulty in observing consciousness is analogous to saying that you cannot see the moving patterns of glowing phosphor on your television screen, all you see is the ball game that is showing on that screen. The indirect realist view of television is that what you are seeing is first and foremost glowing phosphor patterns on a glass screen, and only in secondary fashion are those moving images also representative of the remote ball game. The choice therefore is that either we accept a magical mysterious account of perception and consciousness that seems impossible in principle to implement in any artificial vision system, or we have to face the seemingly incredible truth that the world we perceive around us is indeed an internal data structure within our physical brain. The principal focus of neurophysiology should now be to identify the operational principles behind the three-dimensional volumetric imaging mechanism in the brain, that is responsible for the generation of the solid stable world of visual experience that we observe to surround us in conscious experience.

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7 A Perceptual Modelling Approach The divergence between the neurophysiological and phenomenal descriptions of visual processing is so great, that it is hard to know where to even begin in the attempt to model visual experience. The elements of neurophysiology appear to be neurons that generate pulses of electrical activity that are transmitted across the chemical synapse. The elements of conscious experience appear to be solid volumetric objects bounded by coloured surfaces, embedded in a three-dimensional void of perceived space. There is a dimensional mismatch between these bottom-up and top-down descriptions of visual representation, that makes it impossible to model conscious experience in neurophysiological terms with any confidence that the model has any validity in the brain. For until the mapping between subjective experience and the corresponding neurophysiological state has been identified beyond question, it is impossible to verify whether the neural model has correctly replicated any particular phenomenal experience. Nagel (1974) suggests that we set aside temporarily the relation between mind and brain and devise a new method of objective phenomenology, i.e. to quantify the structural features of the subjective experience in objective terms, without committing to any particular neurophysiological theory of perceptual representation. Chalmers (1995) extends this line of reasoning with the observation that the subjective experience and its corresponding neurophysiological state carry the same information content. Chalmers therefore proposes a principle of structural coherence between the structure of phenomenal experience and the structure of objectively reportable awareness, to reflect the central fact that consciousness and cognition do not float free of one another, but cohere in an intimate way. The connecting link between mind and brain therefore is information in information-theoretic terms (Shannon 1948), because the concept of information is defined at a sufficiently high level of abstraction to be independent of any particular physical realization, and yet it is sufficiently specified as to be measurable in any physical system given that the coding scheme is known. A similar argument is made by Clark (1993, p. 50).

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I propose therefore a perceptual modelling approach, i.e. a quantitative model of the content of conscious experience, expressed in the subjective variables of perceived color, shape, and motion, rather than in the neurophysiological variables of neural activations or spiking frequencies etc. The variables encoded in the perceptual model correspond to the sense-data or primitives of raw conscious experience, except that these variables are not supposed to be the sense-data themselves, they merely represent the value or magnitude of the sense-data that they are defined to represent. In essence this amounts to modelling the information content of subjective experience, which is the quantity that is common between the mind and brain, thus allowing an objectively quantified description of a subjective experience. In fact this approach is exactly the concept behind the description of phenomenal color space in the dimensions of hue, intensity, and saturation, as seen in the CIE chromaticity space. The geometrical dimensions of that space have been tailored to match the properties of the subjective experience of color as measured psychophysically, expressed in terms that are agnostic to any particular neurophysiological theory of color representation. Clark (1993) presents a systematic description of other sensory qualities in quantitative terms, based on this same concept of ‘objective phenomenology’. The thorny issue of the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is thus neatly side-stepped, because the perceptual model remains safely on the subjective side of the mind- brain barrier, and therefore the variables expressed in the model refer explicitly to subjective qualia rather than to neurophysiological states of the brain. While this is of course only an interim solution, for eventually the neurophysiological basis of conscious experience must also be identified, the perceptual model does offer objective information about the informational content encoded in the physical mechanism of the brain. This is a necessary prerequisite to a search for the neurophysiological basis of conscious experience, for we must clearly circumscribe the explanandum before we can attempt an explanans. This approach has served psychology well in the past, particularly in the field of color perception, where the quantification of the dimensions of color experience led directly to great advances in our understanding of the neurophysiology of color vision.

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8 The Dimensions of Conscious Experience The phenomenal world is composed of solid volumes, bounded by colored surfaces, embedded in a spatial void. Every point on every visible surface is perceived at an explicit spatial location in three-dimensions (Clark 1993), and all of the visible points on a perceived object like a cube or a sphere, or this page, are perceived simultaneously in the form of continuous surfaces in depth. The perception of multiple transparent surfaces, as well as the experience of empty space between the observer and a visible surface, reveals that multiple depth values can be perceived in any spatial direction. I propose to model the information in perception as a three-dimensional volumetric data structure in which every point can encode either the experience of transparency, or the experience of a perceived color at that location. Since perceived color is expressed in the three dimensions of hue, intensity, and saturation, the perceived world can be expressed as a six-dimensional manifold (Clark 1993), with three spatial and three color dimensions. The appearance of a color value at some point in this representational manifold corresponds by definition to the subjective experience of that color at the corresponding point in phenomenal space. If we can describe the generation of this volumetric data structure from the two-dimensional retinal image as a computational transformation, we will have quantified the information processing apparent in perception, as a necessary prerequisite to the search for a neurophysiological mechanism that can perform that same transformation. Once we recognize the world of experience for what it really is, it becomes clearly evident that the representational strategy used by the brain is an analogical one. In other words, objects and surfaces are represented in the brain not by an abstract symbolic code, as suggested in the propositional paradigm, nor are they encoded by the activation of individual cells or groups of cells representing particular features detected in the scene, as suggested in the neural network or feature detection paradigm. Instead, objects are represented in the brain by constructing full spatial effigies of them that appear to us for all the world like the objects themselves- or at least so it seems to us only because we have never seen those objects in their raw form, but only

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through our perceptual representations of them. Indeed the only reason why this very obvious fact of perception has been so often overlooked is because the illusion is so compelling that we tend to mistake the world of perception for the real world of which it is merely a copy. This is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees, for the evidence for the nature of perceptual representation in the brain has been right before us all along, cleverly disguised as objects and surfaces in a virtual world that we take to be reality. So for example when I stand before a table, the light reflected from that table into my eye produces an image on my retina, but my conscious experience of that table is not of a flat two-dimensional image, but rather my brain fabricates a three-dimensional replica of that table carefully tailored to exactly match the retinal image, and presents that replica in an internal perceptual space that includes a model of my environment around me, and a miniature copy of my own body at the center of that environment. The model table is located in the same relation to the model of my body as the real table is to my real body in external space. The perception or consciousness of the table therefore is identically equal to the appearance of the effigy of the table in my perceptual representation, and the experience of that internal effigy is the closest I can ever come to having the experience of the physical table itself.

9 The Cartesian Theatre and the Homunculus Problem This “picture-in-the-head” or “Cartesian theatre” concept of visual representation has been criticized on the grounds that there would have to be a miniature observer to view this miniature internal scene, resulting in an infinite regress of observers within observers. However this argument is invalid, for there is no need for an internal observer of the scene, since the internal representation is simply a data structure like any other data in a computer, except that this data is expressed in spatial form. If the existence of a spatial data structure required a homunculus to view it, the same objection would also apply to symbolic or verbal information in the brain, which would also require a homunculus to read or interpret that data. In fact any information

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encoded in the brain needs only to be available to other internal processes rather than to a miniature copy of the whole brain. To deny the spatial nature of the perceptual representation is to deny the spatial nature so clearly evident in the world we perceive around us. To paraphrase Descartes, it is not only the existence of myself that is verified by the fact that I think, but when I experience the vivid spatial presence of objects in the phenomenal world, those objects are certain to exist, at least in the form of a subjective experience, with properties as I experience them to have, i.e. location, spatial extension, color, and shape. I think them, therefore they exist. All that remains uncertain is whether those percepts exist also as objective external objects as well as internal perceptual ones, and whether their perceived properties correspond to objective properties. But their existence in my internal perceptual world is beyond question if I experience them, even if only as a hallucination.

10 The Neuroreductionist Objection A number of theorists have proposed (Dennett 1991, 1992, O’Regan 1992, Pessoa et al. 1998) that consciousness is an illusion, and that in fact the conscious experience is considerably more impoverished than it appears subjectively. For example the loss of resolution in peripheral vision is not immediately apparent to the naïve observer. However the objective of perceptual modelling is not to quantify the casual experience of the naïve observer, but the careful observation of the critical observer. For the loss of acuity in peripheral vision is plainly evident under phenomenological observation, and can be easily verified psychophysically, and therefore this should also be reflected in the perceptual model. Dennett argues that visual information need not be encoded explicitly in the brain, but merely implicitly in some kind of compressed representation. For example the percept of a surface with uniform color could be abbreviated to a kind of edge image, with a single value to encode the color of the whole surface, as is the practice in image compression algorithms. This notion appears to be supported by neurophysiological studies of the retina which show that ganglion cells respond only to spatial or tempo-

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ral discontinuities of the brightness profile, with no response within regions of uniform color or brightness. Dennett argues that the experience of a filled-in field of color in uniform fields, and in the blind spot, does not suggest an explicit filling-in mechanism in the brain, but that the color experience is encoded by “ignoring an absence” (Dennett 1991,1992). However an absence can only be ignored from a representation that already contains something in the place of the ignored item, otherwise one would experience nothing at all, rather than a spatially continuous field of color. In fact the experience of the retinal blind spot, or a uniformly colored surface, produces a distinct colored experience at every point throughout the colored region to a particular spatial resolution as a spatial continuum, and the informational content of that experience is greater than that in a compressed representation. If it is true that the retinal image encodes only brightness transitions at visual boundaries, then some other mechanism higher up in the processing stream must perform an explicit filling-in to account for the subjective experience of the filled-in surface. In fact the many illusory filling-in phenomena such as the Kanizsa illusion implicate exactly this kind of mechanism in perception. If it were sufficient for the brain to encode visual information only implicitly in some kind of compressed code, then there would be no need to posit any perceptual processing beyond the retina, because the retina already contains an implicit representation of all of the information in the visual scene. If visual information were indeed expressed in a compressed neurophysiological code, then our subjective experience of that information would have to also be correspondingly compressed or abstracted, as is the case for example with an experience of a remembered or imagined scene. The fact that our phenomenal experience is of a filled-in volumetric world is direct and concrete evidence for a volumetric filling-in mechanism in the brain. This debate highlights the indispensable contribution of phenomenology, for in the absence of the subjective experience of vision there would be no check on theories of visual processing based exclusively on neurophysiological or psychophysical data. In fact the bottom-up approach that works upwards from the properties of the single cell, and the top-down approach that works downwards from the conscious experience, are equally valid and

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complementary approaches to the investigation of visual processing. Both are essential because each affords a view of the problem from its own unique perspective. If we follow Dennett’s lead and ignore phenomenology whenever it is in conflict with contemporary neurophysiology, we end up like the Behaviourists, with a denial of the existence of the very object that psychology set out to explain in the first place. In fact Dennett’s contention that consciousness is somehow less than it appears is tantamount to asking us to ignore the evidence of our own experience. Although there are certain aspects of consciousness which may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer and therefore require more critical phenomenological observation, nevertheless consciousness is by definition exactly as rich and complex as it appears phenomenologically, and no less, even if that appearance happens to be inconvenient for neurophysiological theories of visual representation.

11 The Function of Conscious Experience There is much discussion in philosophy about the possible function of conscious experience, and whether it is an epiphenomenon that has no direct functional value. The issue is highlighted with the notion of the hypothetical ‘zombie’ whose behavior as observed externally is identical to that of normal people, except that this zombie supposedly lacks all conscious experience. This notion sounds very peculiar from the indirect realist perspective. For once we accept that the world which appears to be external to our bodies is in fact an internal data structure in our physical brain, the notion of the zombie as proposed becomes a contradiction in terms. For a zombie that does not possess an internal picture of the world around it, could not possibly walk about in the world avoiding obstacles as we do. Without a conscious memory of where it had just been, and a conscious intent of where it would like to go next, the zombie would behave much as we do when we are in an unconscious state, i.e. it would lie inert and immobile, with neither the incentive nor the capacity for action.

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The notion of this kind of zombie presupposes a distinction between the structural aspects of the perceived world, which are supposedly a reflection of the objective spatial properties of the world, and the subjective qualia with which those perceptual structures are somehow painted or clothed. This harkens back to an old distinction in psychology between the primary and secondary qualities of perception. Immanuel Kant argued however that the perception of space and time are themselves a priori intuitions, i.e. they are a kind of quale used by the mind to express the structure of external reality. Therefore the fact that the world of experience appears as a volumetric spatial structure is itself an aspect of conscious experience, rather than a veridical manifestation of the true nature of the external world. The phenomenon of hemi-neglect demonstrates that portions of perceived space can completely disappear from consciousness, making it impossible to form either mental or perceptual imagery in that portion of space. It is not just the objects in that space that become invisible, but the very space itself as a potential holder of objects that ceases to exist. This condition clearly indicates the reality of an explicit spatial representation in the brain. The notion of the hypothetical zombie therefore is impossible in principle, because it is impossible to have any perceptual experience in the absence of some subjective qualia by which that experience is expressed. For qualia are the carriers of the information experienced in perception, just as electromagnetic waves are the carriers of radio and television signals. Again, the notion of information can help clarify the central role of qualia in perceptual representation. For information is defined independent of the physical medium by which it is carried, whether it be electromagnetic radiation, electrical voltages on a wire, or characters on a printed page, etc. However in every case there must be some physical medium to carry that information, for it is impossible for information to exist without a physical carrier of some kind. A similar principle holds on the subjective side of the mind / brain barrier, where the information encoded in perceptual experience is carried by modulations of some subjective quale, whether it be variations of hue, brightness, saturation, pitch, heat or cold, pleasure or pain, etc. The notion of experience without qualia to support it is as absurd as the notion of information without

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any physical medium or mechanism to carry that information. Similarly, it is impossible in principle to have a spatial experience in the absence of a spatial representational medium to encode it, as demonstrated most clearly by the phenomenon of hemi-neglect, just as it is impossible for us to experience a four-dimensional space with our three-dimensional perceptual and imagery system. The zombie argument therefore is circular, for it presupposes the possibility of behavior in the absence of experience to demonstrate that behavior and experience are theoretically separable. The functional purpose of conscious experience therefore is to provide an internal replica of the external world in order to guide our behavior through the world, for otherwise we would have no knowledge of the structure of the world, or of our location within it.

12 Bounded Nature of the Phenomenal World The idea of perception as a literal volumetric replica of the world inside your head raises another question of boundedness, i.e. how an explicit spatial representation can encode the infinity of external space in a finite volumetric system. The solution to this problem can be found by inspection. For phenomenological examination reveals that perceived space is not infinite, but is bounded. This can be seen most clearly in the night sky, where the distant stars produce a dome-like percept that presents the stars at equal distance from the observer, and that distance is perceived to be less than infinite. The lower half of perceptual space is usually filled with a percept of the ground underfoot, but it too becomes hemispherical when viewed from far enough above the surface, for example from an airplane or a hot air balloon. The dome of the sky above, and the bowl of the earth below therefore define a finite approximately spherical space (Heelan 1983) that encodes distances out to infinity within a representational structure that is both finite and bounded. While the properties of perceived space are approximately Euclidean near the body, there are peculiar global distortions evident in perceived space that pro-

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vide clear evidence of the phenomenal world being an internal rather than an external entity. Consider the phenomenon of perspective, as seen for example when standing on a long straight road that stretches to the horizon in a straight line in opposite directions. The sides of the road appear to converge to a point both up ahead and back behind, but while converging, they are also perceived to pass to either side of the percipient, and at the same time the road is perceived to be straight and parallel throughout its entire length. This property of perceived space is so familiar in everyday experience as to seem totally unremarkable. And yet this most prominent violation of Euclidean geometry offers clear evidence for the non-Euclidean nature of perceived space. For the two sides of the road must therefore in some sense be perceived as being bowed, and yet while bowed, they are also perceived as being straight. This can only mean that the space within which we perceive the road to be embedded, must itself be curved. In fact, the observed warping of perceived space is exactly the property that allows the finite representational space to encode an infinite external space. This property is achieved by using a variable representational scale, i.e. the ratio of the physical distance in the perceptual representation relative to the distance in external space that it represents. This scale is observed to vary as a function of distance from the center of our perceived world, such that objects close to the body are encoded at a larger representational scale than objects in the distance, and beyond a certain limiting distance the representational scale, at least in the depth dimension, falls to zero, i.e. objects beyond a certain distance lose all perceptual depth. This is seen for example where the sun and moon and distant mountains appear as if cut out of paper and pasted against the dome of the sky. The distortion of perceived space is suggested in figure 1 A, which depicts the perceptual representation of a man walking down a road. The phenomenon of perspective is by definition a transformation from a three-dimensional space through a focal point to a two- dimensional surface. The appearance of perspective on the retinal surface therefore is no mystery, and is similar in principle to the image formed by the lens in a camera. What is remarkable in perception is the perspective that is observed, not on a two-di-

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mensional surface, but somehow embedded in the three-dimensional space of our perceptual world. Nowhere in the objective world of external reality is there anything that is remotely similar to the phenomenon of perspective as we experience it phenomenologically, where a perspective foreshortening is observed not on a two-dimensional image, but in three dimensions on a solid volumetric object. The appearance of perspective in the three- dimensional world we perceive around us is perhaps the strongest evidence for the internal nature of the world of experience, for it shows that the world that appears to be the source of the light that enters our eye, must actually be downstream of the retina, for it exhibits the traces of perspective distortion imposed by the lens of the eye, although in a completely different form. This view of perspective offers an explanation for another otherwise paradoxical but familiar property of perceived space, whereby more distant objects are perceived to be both smaller, and yet at the same time to be undiminished in size. This corresponds to the difference in subjects’ reports depending on whether they are given objective vs. projective instructions (Coren et al. 1994, p. 500) in how to report their observations, showing that both types of information are available perceptually. This duality in size perception is often described as a cognitive compensation for the foreshortening of perspective, as if the perceptual representation of more distant objects is indeed smaller, but is somehow labelled with the correct size as some kind of symbolic tag representing objective size attached to each object in perception. However this kind of explanation is misleading, for the objective measure of size is not a discrete quantity attached to individual objects, but is more of a continuum, or gradient of difference between objective and projective size, that varies monotonically as a function of distance from the percipient. In other words, this phenomenon is best described as a warping of the space itself within which objects are represented, so that objects that are warped coherently along with the space in which they are embedded appear undistorted perceptually.

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Figure 1 A: The perceptual representation of a man walking down a long straight road. The sides of the road are perceived to be parallel and equidistant throughout their length, and yet at the same time they are perceived to converge to a point both up ahead and behind, and that point is perceived to be at a distance which is less than infinite. B: The deformation of the infinite Cartesian grid caused by the perspective transformation of the perceptual representation. This distorted reference grid is used to make judgements about objective size and straightness in the perceived world.

This concept is illustrated in figure 1 B that shows how a uniformly spaced Cartesian coordinate system is warped by the three-dimensional perspective transformation that maps points P(α,β,r) in Euclidean space, expressed in polar coordinates, to points Q(α,β,π−ν) in perceptual space. The variables α and β represent azimuth and elevation angles in a polar coordinate system centered on the percipient, r represents radial distance from the center, and ν represents a vergence measure defined as ν = 2 atan(1/2r) In other words, azimuth and elevation angles are preserved through this transformation, while radial distance is compressed by a nonlinear vergence measure that maps the infinity of Euclidean distance into a finite bounded

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range. This geometrical transformation of the infinite Cartesian grid actually represents a unique kind of perspective transformation on the Cartesian grid, because the transformed space looks like a perspective view of a Cartesian grid when viewed from the inside, with all parallel lines converging to a point in opposite directions, although this perspective is defined in three dimensions rather than two. The significance of this observation is that by mapping space into a perspective- distorted grid, the distortion of perspective is removed, in the same way that plotting log data on a log plot removes the logarithmic component of the data. If the distorted reference grid of figure 1 B is used to measure lines and distances in figure 1 A, the bowed line of the road on which the man is walking is aligned with the bowed reference grid and is therefore perceived to be straight. Therefore the distortion of straight lines into curves in the perceptual representation is not immediately apparent to the percipient, because they are perceived to be straight. Similarly, the walls of the houses depicted in figure 1 A which bow outwards from the observer, conform to the distortion of the reference grid in figure 1 B, and are therefore perceived to be straight and vertical. Likewise, the nearer and farther houses are perceived to be of approximately equal height and depth in objective size, because they span the same number of reference lines in the perspective distorted grid, and yet at the same time the farther house is perceived to be smaller in projective size, as observed also in perspective. This model therefore offers a quantitative description of the otherwise paradoxical phenomenon of the simultaneous experience of objective and projective size in perception. It should be emphasized that figure 1 A does not depict the subjective experience of spatial vision, for we do not see the world of perception as distorted like a fish-eye lens view. Rather, this model represents the informational content of the kind of visual representation that embodies the logical contradictions observed in phenomenal experience, where parallel lines can be perceived to meet at two points in opposite directions which are less than an infinite distance from the observer, while passing to either side of the observer, and at the same time those lines are perceived as straight and parallel throughout their length even where they meet. This data structure is a literal embodiment of the antinomy, or logical contradiction built into perception

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observed by Kant, i.e. that perceived space is at the same time finite and infinite. For the representation truly encodes all of space out to infinity, although in a truly finite representation, using the trick of reducing the resolution all the way to zero resolution in the depth dimension beyond a certain perceived distance. This spherical coordinate system has the ecological advantage that the space near the body is represented at the highest spatial resolution, whereas the less important more distant parts of space are represented at lower resolution. This representational trick is only invisible to us under normal circumstances because we have never seen space the way it really is. In the words of William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”.

13 The Embodied Percipient This model of spatial representation emphasizes another aspect of perception that is often ignored in models of vision, that our percept of the world includes a percept of our own body within that world, and our body is located at a very special location at the center of that world, and it remains at the center of perceived space even as we move about in the external world. Perception is embodied by its very nature, for the percept of our body is the only thing that gives an objective measure of scale in the world, for a view of the world around us would be useless if it were not explicitly related to our body in that world. The little man at the center of the spherical world of perception therefore is not a miniature observer of the internal scene, but is itself a spatial percept, constructed of the same perceptual material as the rest of the spatial scene, for that scene would be incomplete without a replica of the percipient’s own body in his perceived world. As we walk down a street we experience a percept of our feet stepping beneath us, but our bubble of perceptual experience seems to remain centered on our head even as we move through the world. It seems almost as if we are pushing the street backwards with our feet, and this causes the image of the street up ahead to expand outwards from the vanishing point, and arc around us before converging back to a point be-

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hind us, all the while following the warped grid lines of our distorted perceptual world. Objects in the perceived world are observed to morph as we walk, swelling up like a balloon as they pass by, only to shrink back down again behind us. And yet since this morphing conforms to the distorted reference grid of our perceived world, we experience those objects as undistorted, as if they were embedded in a Euclidean world. However the distorted nature of perceived space is clearly evident when standing in a long corridor or hallway, whose four corners between the walls, floor, and ceiling expand outwards from a point up ahead, and converge inwards to a point behind, but appear to be straight and parallel throughout their length. This bizarre behavior of the world of experience is clearly not a property of the world itself, but a direct manifestation of the peculiar representational scheme used by the brain to present the world to us in conscious experience.

14 Conclusion Time and again throughout the history of the investigation of our own sentient nature, movements have arisen to acknowledge conscious experience as an objective reality in its own right, independent of the world of which it is an imperfect replica. The most significant such movement was psychology itself, which took on the challenge of the scientific investigation of the psyche. Time and again these movements have been followed by dark ages that questioned the very existence of consciousness as an objective reality, and sought to redefine psychology as the science of behavior, or neurophysiology, or anything other than the elusive psyche. This reaction is understandable given the enormous complexity and sophistication of conscious experience. We are all born naïve realists, and it seems that only a few in each generation ever come to see through the illusion and recognize the world of experience for what it really is. The tendency towards naïve realism has always been most urgent and passionate in those circles that undertake the daunting task of providing a neurophysiological or computational explanation of the mechanism of perceptual processing (Gibson 1972, Dennett 1991, Velmans 1990), for the

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naïve realist perspective greatly simplifies our concept of the functional role of perception. However no real progress is made by modelling a simplified or reduced version of perception, especially one that leaves consciousness as something magical and mysterious that seems forever beyond human comprehension. The only way we will ever discover the neurophysiological principles behind perception is by first taking stock of the full measure of the phenomenon of conscious experience, even if that experience appears to violate everything we think we know about neurophysiology. If conscious experience is inconsistent with our notions of biological computation, then it is our neurophysiological theories that are in desperate need of fundamental revision, for the evidence of phenomenology is primary, and offers a direct and reliable view of the informational content of the representational mechanism of the brain. The time has come to restore the original charter of psychology as the science of the psyche, and to begin the search for a neurophysiological theory that is consistent with the observed properties of conscious experience.

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A Radical Externalist Approach to Consciousness: The Enlarged Mind∗ Riccardo Manzotti

1 Internalism vs. Externalism During the last ten years, interest in the scientific understanding of the nature of consciousness has been rekindled (Hameroff, Kaszniak et al. 1996; Jennings 2000; Miller 2005). To date, a satisfactory and accepted framework has not been achieved either because experimental data is scarce or because of the theoretical misleading standpoints. In the following, I will analyze the latter case. In other words, understanding consciousness is fraught with difficulties on account of some implicit or explicit assumptions that are uncritically accepted. As a result, the whole discussion about the mind runs the risk of being either misleading or fruitless. In order to avoid conceptual misunderstandings concerning the conjectural framework of this paper, I have adopted the approach the philosopher Galen Strawson so aptly put in a nutshell: “Materialism is the view that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is physical. It is a view about the actual universe, and in this paper I will assume that it is true” (Strawson 2003). I have no intention of challenging this standpoint. Nonetheless, the implications of this widespread and acceptable view run much deeper than is generally realized (Kim 1998; Kim 2005). At present, the majority of scientific and philosophical literature is biased by a seldom challenged assumption: the separation between the subject and the object. Although it is obvious that the body of the subject is separate from the body of the object, it is by no means so obvious that the mind is confined by the same boundaries of the ∗

Part of the presented material has been published in Manzotti, R. (2006). Consciousness and existence as a process. Mind and Matter: In press.

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brain: indeed, there are many phenomena which extend beyond the boundaries of the body (behaviours, actions, perceptions, ecological processes). The mind could be one of them. With regard to the nature of the mind, two very broad standpoints must be considered: internalism and externalism. The former states that our consciousness is identical (or correlated) to the processes, events or states of affairs going on inside the boundary of our body. The latter affirms that our consciousness might depend partially or totally on the events, processes or state of affairs outside our head or even outside our body. Most current approaches to the problem of consciousness tend towards the internalist viewpoint (Crick 1994; Edelman and Tononi 2000; Metzinger 2000; Rees, Kreiman et al. 2002; Crick and Koch 2003; Koch 2004). However, this approach raises several conundrums. If the mind is entirely located or dependent on events or states of affairs located inside the cranium, how can they represent events taking place in the external world? what's more, consciousness appears to have properties which differ from anything taking place inside the cranium (Place 1956). The problem of internalism has been summed up, with customary elegance, by William James who affirmed that “[The internalist view] supposes two elements, mind knowing and thing known, and treats them as irreducible. Neither gets out of itself or into the other, neither in any way is the other, neither makes the other. They just stand face to face in a common world, and one simply knows, or is known unto, its counterpart” (James 1890/1950, p. 218). Spurred on by common sense, the relating literature has revealed a very strong impulse to “etherealize” or “cranialize” consciousness (Honderich 2000). The internalist perspective has consistently led to dualism* and still promotes a physicalist version of dualism by endowing the brain (or a brain subset, the Neural Correlate of Consciousness) with the same role as the dualistic subject. Koch’s recent book (Koch 2004, p.87), endorses an unbiased and lucid view which is internalist with respect to consciousness and the brain: “The entire brain is sufficient for consciousness – it determines conscious sensations day in and day out. Identifying all of the *

For an historical analysis of the birth of the internalist view and its relation with dualism, cf. Ibid.

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brain with the NCC, however is not useful because likely a subset of brain matter will do. I am interested in the smallest set of neurons responsible for a particular percept.” On the other hand, many authors have questioned the soundness of the separation of the subject and the object. They are searching for a different framework in which the subject and the object provide two different perspectives on the same state of affairs. Accordingly, they embrace some brand of externalism where the relevant part of reality “responsible for a particular percept” is not confined inside the brain or the body. Externalism is the view “that not all mental things are exclusively located inside the head [or mind] of the persona or creature that has these things” (Rowlands 2003, p.2). According to Mark Rowlands, there are two variants of externalism: content externalism and vehicle externalism. The former corresponds to the “idea that the semantic content of mental states that have it is often dependent on factors […] that are external to the subject of that content” (Rowlands 2003, p.5). The latter is more radical and affirms that “the structures and mechanisms that allow a creature to possess or undergo various mental states and processes are often structure and mechanisms that extend beyond the skin of that creature” (Rowlands 2003, p.6). In the following paragraphs, I will present a new version of vehicle externalism called “the enlarged mind”. In the recent past, other authors presented different versions of vehicle externalism (Dretske 1995; Chalmers and Clark 1999; Lycan 2001; O' Regan and Noe 2001). The main difference between these approaches and the enlarged mind is the fact that they are not radical enough in abandoning the assumption of the separation between the subject and the object. For instance, the form of externalism advocated by Kevin O’ Regan and Alva Nöe (O'Regan and Noe 2001) evolves towards a kind of functionalism since it does not criticize the fundamental ontology based on autonomous individuals (Manzotti and Sandini 2001). Many authors who advocated externalist standpoints were not recognized as such. However their views are worth to be mentioned, albeit very briefly, in order to understand the position defended here. The position I de-

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velop here is related with three different and yet connected viewpoints: ecological perception and the theory of affordances (Gibson 1977; Gibson 1979), externalism (Rowlands 2003), process philosophy (Whitehead 1927/1978; Griffin 1998), and Neorealism (Holt, Marvin et al. 1910; Holt 1914; Tonneau 2004). The rationale of this proposal is simple, albeit radical. It can be summarized as follows. It is traditionally assumed that there is a world of things and there is an experience of such a world of things: the two being different and separate. This standpoint is based on the common belief that the world is made of things which seem to exist autonomously and without any need of being in relation with the rest of their environment. I will start challenging this belief and showing proof of the fact that in order to exist something needs to interact with something else. Thus I will claim that the existence of things (objects and events) should be re-described as their taking place. A different ontology must be sketched here: a process based ontology. Having reframed in this way the world of things, I will proceed to the following step: how does the experience of things fit in this new framework? My bet is that – as soon as we drop the belief in a world of things existing autonomously and as soon as we conceive the world as made of processes extended in time and space – experience (and thus consciousness) does not need to be located in a special domain (or to require the emergence of something new): experience is just made of those processes that make up our behavioural story. Experience becomes no more constrained to the activity taking place inside our cranium: experience becomes an extended collection of processes comprehending all those events that are part of our conscious experience. Most concepts – like those of representation or mental causation – get a twist and develop a new perspective. In the following I will challenge such assumed separation between subject and object. I could not use better words than those employed by Alfred N. Whitehead: “The false idea we have to get rid of is that of nature as a mere aggregate of independent entities, each capable of isolation. According to this conception these entities, whose characteristics are capable of isolated definition, come together and by their accidental relations form the system of nature” (Whitehead 1926, p.141).

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2 A Continuum of Processes In order to support a consisted version of vehicle externalism, I will present a series of perceptual cases in which the separation between the conscious perception of the world and the physical world perceived is not necessary; cases in which the separation between the subject and the object can be dropped. In order to make as clear as possible my rationale I emphasize a principle that I will apply consistently: something, in order to exist, has to produce some effects. If something produced no effect, there would be no difference between its existence and its absence: in either case what would happen would be the same. Here, I am not going to enter into the debate of the existence of logical entities and abstract concepts. I will keep our feet on the ground of physical events. Ether, phlogiston, and epicycles were dismissed as being incapable of making a real difference. I will use this principle to show that the separation between the subject and the object is unfounded. The rainbow. The rainbow is perhaps an example in which the separation between the observed object/event and the observing object/event is not evident. When the sun is sufficiently low on the horizon and projects its rays at an appropriate angle against a cloud with a large enough volume of drops of water suspended in the atmosphere, an observer can see an arch with all the spectrum of colours. All drops of water reflect the sunlight in the same manner, yet only those which have a particular geometrical relation to the observer, due to his position, and due to the orientation of the sun rays, are seen as part of the rainbow. The position of the seen rainbow thus depends on the position of the observer. An important caveat is needed here. With the words “observer of a phenomenon”, I do not refer to a human being, or a conscious subject, or an agent with a mind. I refer to a physical system that is capable of “recognizing” an occurrence of that phenomenon. With the term “recognizing” I refer to the capability of selectively producing an outcome of some kind in response to the presence of that phenomenon. For instance, an observer of a rainbow is a system which can produce an outcome whenever it is in front of a rainbow.

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According to this definition, which has no pretension of being used outside the scope of this paper, a digital or film camera is not an observer since it records all the visual information without being able to recognize explicitly anything. On the contrary, a human being, most animals, artificial pattern recognisers are observers. Let’s consider a simplified version of a rainbow as that shown in Fig. 1. A one-dimensional column of drops is floating in the air. A stream of parallel white rays of light collides with them. As a result, each drop reflects a divergent stream of coloured rays of light. Is there a unity? A whole? No. The rainbow as a unity, as a whole, is not yet there. Nevertheless, as soon as an observer would select a given combinations of drops, a rainbow would take place. If no observer were there, would the rays produce an effect as a whole? No, they would not, because they would continue their travel in space without interacting and, eventually, they would spread everywhere. Their opportunity to produce a joint effect would be lost. As William James wrote “In the parallelogram of forces, the ‘forces’ themselves do not combine into the diagonal resultant; a body is needed on which they may impinge, to exhibit their resultant effect” (James 1890/1950, p.159). Therefore their cause (the supposed/potential rainbow) would not have produced any effect and would not have existed. It had only a potential existence; it existed only as a possibility. We assumed that there must have been a rainbow, but there wasn’t. On the contrary, if an observer were there, the converging rays of light would have hit his/her photoreceptors and a fast but complex chain of physical processes would have continued from the retina to the cortical areas up to a point where the recognition of the rainbow as a whole (a coloured arch) would have taken place. Thanks to the existence of the physical structure of the observer, the drops of water of the rainbow would have been able to produce a joint effect. As it is shown in Figure 1a, until the whole process is concluded, there is no actual rainbow as a whole. Something could happen at the very last moment in order to interfere with the completion of the process. Until the end, there are two possible outcomes Figure 1b and Figure 1c). (Figure 1, following page: A Rainbow)

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In the former, a perceiver is missing and the rays of light loose their chance to produce an effect as a whole. In the latter, an observer allows the rainbow to take place as a process and as a whole.The cause seems to exist only thanks to the occurrence of its effect (Figure 1d): The cause of the cause is the effect and the effect of the effect is the cause. This is paradoxical. Yet the paradox disappears once we conceive the unity of the underlying process (Figure 1e). If we apply the principle, mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, we must conclude that the rainbow remains a possibility, an abstraction, until the rays of light interact with something with the proper capability (for instance, a perceiver of rainbows). Thus the answer to the question: “Does the rainbow exist independently of the act of observation?” is obviously “No”. Even from a logical point of view, to define the position of a rainbow, an expert physicist would need to know the precise point of view of the observer. Thus the rainbow is not a thing: it is a process, in which there is an entanglement between a physical complex and an observer. The drops of water do not constitute a distinctive whole (the rainbow) unless and until they produce a joint effect. The effect cannot be split from the cause, nor can the cause and the effect be split from their relation. The effect is responsible for the existence of the cause. Further, the existence of the rainbow depends not only on the presence of the physical conditions given above and the observer, but on a causal continuity between the twos. This continuity consists of rays of light at the right location actually hitting the retina of the observer and setting up a continual discharge in the brain, as long as the physical relationships are maintained. Once these physical relationships are broken, the rainbow – as a process and as a whole – ceases to exist. In the cloud there are almost infinite possible rainbows. Yet only a very limited number of them are actually able to produce an effect as a whole: those that interact with the proper kind of physical systems (normally human beings’ visual systems).

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The concept of a “potential rainbow” is misleading because it entails the existence of something which is not yet there. It would be more precise something like “some of the conditions necessary to the occurrence of a rainbow”. The physical conditions of the drops are only half of the story: the other half is in the observer’s eyes and brains. The whole story is the occurrence of the process as a whole (which we call a rainbow). Is the rainbow a special case or is a particularly evident case of a more general rule? I present here a continuum of cases, raging from the rainbow to apparently more concrete objects which are as dependent on the existence of the observer as the rainbow. Patterns in general. An example is provided by the three crosses in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Three crosses: do they exist in the same way?

They seem to have different degrees of autonomous existence. The grey cross seems to be the most autonomous. The other two are more arbitrarily created by the perceiver (a cross of characters ‘u’ and a cross of prime numbers). If our eyes were equipped with hard-wired receptors for prime numbers (something easily achievable in a machine using a Character Recognition System and a mathematical rule), we would see the last cross as easily as the first one. The perceived difference is based on the difficulty that the brain has in viewing them. The crosses exist because they interact with the brain. Con-

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versely, the brain can interact with them because they exist. What about the famous Lincoln’s face in Salvador Dalì’s painting or the Dalmata Picture? In both cases the unity of those dots and patches on a screen or on a piece of paper takes place thanks to the observer in front of them. Countless similar examples can be derived from other kinds of patterns. They all take place because there are systems (which are called observers) that allow them to be causes of physical processes. Constellations. We can choose to connect one star to a constellation or to remove it. There are no fixed rules based on their magnitude or position and the historical choices are what they are: we are fond of conventional choices, for sentimental reasons. Nelson Goodman wrote: “a constellation becomes such only through being chosen from among all configurations […] as we thus make constellations by picking out and putting together certain stars rather than others” (Goodman 1978, p.36). Faces. They exist because the brain has devoted great resources to select them, to the extent that a special cortical has been assigned to the process as testified in several studies (Phelps 2001). Patients suffering from prosopagnosia due to lesions of the relevant cortical area are well aware of this. If all human beings were affected by prosopoagnosia, faces would stop producing effects. The human capability of recognising faces allows the ‘man in the moon’ to produce an effect. Thanks to the fact that human beings are trained to recognize faces, a face-like configuration in the moon produces effects as a whole. Landscapes. A landscape becomes a unity only because it is perceived by someone. For instance, take the Hong Kong skyline: buildings that are very distant produce a joint effect thanks to the physical system which is the observer. Music and words. Spoken words and pieces of music are collections of sound waves. Thanks to the existence of listeners, they produce effects; spoken words and music come into existence as discrete unities of sound. Spoken words, speeches, songs, concertos, arias, symphonies all exist because human beings can perceive them as wholes while they are occurring. Here again is an

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actual physical continuity between the sound waves and the brain mechanisms. Colours. What we know as colour is the result of the processing done by the brain, based on a system with a site in the V4 complex (Zeki and Bartels 1998) whose precise implementation is not yet fully understood. Yet and very roughly, colours are a complex relation among several wavelengths, a relation which is allowed to be the cause of a physical process, thanks to the interaction with the proper physical system. In sum, all these examples show that the shift from a pure abstraction to an actual entity is based on the occurrence of processes between physical systems. The idea is that all these “objects” exist only because they can be the causes of physical processes and that, their being causes, is not something they can accomplish autonomously. Their being causes requires the interaction with the proper kind of physical systems (in all the previous cases brain and bodies of human beings). Furthermore these examples suggest that, from a processual point of view, there is no separation between the object of perception and the perceptual process: the two being different ways of describing the same course of events.

3 A Radical Externalist Approach: the Onphene and the Enlarged Mind Let me recap the meaning of the previous examples and the core of the proposal of this paper. The traditional standpoint conceives reality as made of relatively autonomous objects or relatively autonomous events. This entails that the subject and the object, being both instantiated by autonomous set of objects or events, are irremediably separate in time and in space. On the other hand, we – as human beings –perceive the world not as an image of the world but as the world itself; we and the world as we know it being two perspectives on the same process. The rainbow and the other examples try to convey this insight: the world is not made of relatively autonomous events; the world is

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made of intrinsically related processes. Therefore, the subject and the object are not separate and there is no problem of re-presentation, since the experience and the occurrence of the world are identical. In all previous cases, the cause does not exist isolated from its effect. They are both taking place as two different ways of describing a process which cannot be split. Whenever the examples regarded perceptual events (like the perception of a rainbow or a face), the perceived object does not exist in isolation from its perception. There is no need to add a phenomenal rainbow to the physical one. Symmetrically, there is no need to suppose a physical rainbow noumenically inaccessible. Why should we add something to the process carving a rainbow out of the general flow of events? Consciousness (which is the same as representing), existence and being in relation are inseparable: the three being three different ways of describing the same process taking place. Subjects and the surrounding environment are made of processes: some of them shared by both. These processes shape both the world as we experience it and we as the subject of experience. The body and the brain are made in such a way that, given the same external systems, the same processes take place. Subjects cannot perceive the world without a brain and a body. Furthermore, splitting each process in three different aspects allows working in three separate and dimensionally lower subspaces of reality: the domain of physical entities, the domain of phenomenal experience and the domain of their relations. I propose to call this process – which is constitutive of what there is and what we perceive – an onphene, derived from the Greek words ontos (what there is) and phenomenon (what appears to be) (Manzotti and Tagliasco 2001; Manzotti 2003). It refers to a process in which the traditional distinction between cause and effect, perceiver and perceived, measured and measurer is missing, and is the foundation for viewing reality as a whole. The traditional problems of consciousness are going to vanish once the onphene perspective is adopted. The world in which each subject is living is no longer a private bubble of phenomenal experiences concocted by the brain. Each subject is living in and experiencing the real world: the two being diffe-

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rent descriptions of the same process. Each subject lives in that part of the world made by those processes with which s/he is identical with. The subject is those processes. In our own experience, consciousness, existence and becoming cannot be split. As agents, we are part of a physical flow of processes which are possible thanks to our physical structure. These processes have the right properties of our own experiences as well as the right properties of the external world. The need for postulating a noumenal world of primary properties (and their bearer, the object) and a symmetrical world of secondary properties (and their bearer, the subject) arose from the undemonstrated assumption of a separation between the subject and the object. By using a processual view such need vanishes.

Figure 3 The conscious mind is a process that extends to include external reality which the subject is conscious of. In other words, there are no “external objects” and “internal phenomenal representations”: there are just processes originating in the external world. Yet they take place thanks to the existence of a particular brain.

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Adopting a processual point of view a different framework begins to unveil. Consciousness and existence can be explained as two perspectives on the same processes. I introduce here the concept of the enlarged mind (Figure 3). If every phenomenal experience is identical with a process (an onphene), the sphere of an individual consciousness is identical with a collection of onphenes. If a subject is conscious of a rainbow plus a face plus some speech to which s/he is listening to, it means that at least three separate processes are taking place. In reality there are almost countless processes going on in an environment. However, only a subset of them becomes entangled in that flow, which is the conscious experience of a given subject. The mental life of a subject is no longer constrained inside the cranium, compelled to the creation of a theatrical replica of the external world: the mental life is literally enlarged to the processes constituting everything that mind is conscious of. There is not a mental life and a physical life: there is only a life. The mind is identical with everything the subject is conscious of; everything being a process and not an a-temporal static object. Furthermore, the existence of what the mind is conscious of is possible because of the occurrence of those processes that are identical with the mind itself. This is only apparently paradoxical. For instance, the fact that the subject is conscious of the rainbow as an arch of colours does not entail that the subject is responsible for the existence of the sun and the drops of water. Yet, without the subject’s brain, the drops of water would have remained each by its own. No rainbow as a whole would have occurred. Their unity, as a colored arch, is the result of the process occurring. The rainbow, as a unity, does exist thanks to the same process which is identical with the observer. I consider the physical process that begins in the external world and ends in the brain as a unity since it provides a unique framework for the description of physical reality and mental reality. If the hypothesis proves to be correct, it is no longer necessary to look for a neural implementation of conscious activity. A conscious mind is the set of processes that have as causes the object of experience and as effect the recognizable events of the cognitive activity. Such causal processes named onphenes (achievable thanks to the

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brain structure, to the agent body and to the surrounding environment) constitute the external objects and the internal content of the mind, the two being different ways of describing the same thing. The rainbow is an excellent example of an onphene, in which observation, the observer and the observed entity cannot be split. All occur jointly. They are the same occurrence so this is coherent with the fact that they must constitute a unity. But the example of the rainbow, though a very compelling one, is not unique in leading to this conclusion. I propose that most perceived objects (if not all) exist insofar as they take place. The relevance of this argument lies in the fact that the brain is not self-sufficient with respect to mental events. I envisage the brain as the end part of a larger network of physical processes. The world of the subject’s experience is identical with the real world. It is then possible to discard many classical conundrums. In particular it is possible to discard the television view of the mind (Dretske 1995). This is not a complete novelty. Other authors criticized in a similar view the idea that what we have an experience of is an image internally generated of the external view. With respect to direct perception this approach has the advantage of suggesting a solution to all the three classical problems of the mind: the hard problem, epiphenomenalism and the problem of representation. Let’s briefly see how. The hard problem is solved since there is a candidate for the nature of phenomenal experience: the physical processes engaged between the brain and the external environment. There is no more dualism. The price to pay is to discard the assumption of the separation between the subject and the object as well as the autonomy of the existence of objects. Onphenes are neither objective nor subjective. They are private and public at the same time. Epiphenomenalism is solved since phenomenal states are no longer separate from the physical world. Every phenomenal state is identical with a physical process that, as all physical processes, has causal powers and exerts its effects on the environment. The problem of representation is solved since there is no more need to re-produce an internal image of the external world. Phenomenal experiences are identical – they coincide – with the aspects of reality they should repre-

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sent. More precisely, they do not represent reality: they are the reality. The subject does not perceive an image of an object: a process takes place which is constitutive both of subject and object; a process which can be described or as a subjective experience or as an objective event. This is a view which could be considered a radical externalist view since it exploits a kind of radical externalism of the mind with respect to the boundaries of the body: the mind is literally and physically identical with a collection of processes.

4 The Variable Causal Geometry of Consciousness: Memory, Dreams, Illusions, Imagination Up to here we have constrained ourselves to the case of direct perception. It is the kind of perception I have examined so far. Since the mind is extended to include, physically, spatially, and temporally, that part of the world of which it is conscious, there is no need to posit a mental representation separate from what is represented. There is just a presentation of the world. When something is perceived, there is a physical process partly in the brain and partly in the external world. That process (named onphene because of its role in forming a mind and what the mind perceives of the world) defines (and unifies) a part of reality and a part of the mind. Mind and reality are not separated phenomena. They are the same process. It is important to emphasize the fact that direct perception is not direct at all, being mediated by countless intermediate physical medium and events. Direct perception spans considerable time and space. What about cases of not direct perception like memory, dreams, hallucinations, mental imagery, brains in a vat? The framework of the onphene and the enlarged mind states that in a given instant the content of a particular conscious mind is the collection of all those physical events (in the external world) that, thanks to the brain of a particular subject, actually produce effects. The conscious mind is the collection of physical processes going from the physical events to the brain neural areas. The brain is not a special place

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in the sense of having emergent or mental properties. The brain is the physical structure that allows those processes to take place. It is well known that conscious experience is not limited to direct perception. Other possibilities include illusions, memory, mental imagery, and the perception of fixed entities usually referred to as object constancy. If the hypothesis of the onphene is sound, a direct continuity with an external object has to be proven in all of these instances. I propose to redefine the above mental activities as instances of perception with a variable causal geometry while maintaining the continuity between the external events and the brain (Figure 4). Object constancy. Objects maintain their identity when viewed from different angles or distances. Under the dualistic framework (or a derived physicalistic one), it is often assumed that what is perceived as an object has an external autonomous existence (Strawson 1959; Proust 1999). However, other authors have stressed the relation between the existence of objects and their interaction with agents or simply their capability of producing effects (Quine 1960; Davidson 1980). The role of perception becomes that of recovering the assumed pre-existing physical common distal cause (the object) from a multiplicity of proximal phenomenal events. In the present approach, it is the other way round. I apply the usual criterion by which something exists if it produces effects. The subject assumes the existence of a common cause because a multiplicity of different proximal percepts produces the same effect (in the same part of the brain). There are several reasons why different phenomenal experiences produce the same effect. The most common one is that different views of the same object produce the same kinds of interaction. The brain accepts the existence of a common effect as a proof of the existence of a common cause. Once again, it is the effect that is responsible for the existence of the cause. Those events, which produce a common effect, are assumed to belong to a common cause, and indeed there are good reasons for this assumption.

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Memory and mental imagery. There are many situations when the external object is missing. In memory, in dreams, and in mental imagery the brain seems capable of producing the phenomenal experience of an object in the absence of the object itself. But there are strong limits to this, which speak in favour of the thesis presented here. First, no absolutely new phenomenal experience is generated by the brain. Born blind subjects do not dream colours; neither are they able to image them by sheer will. Normal sighted subjects cannot access new sensory modalities (ultrasounds, microwaves, ultraviolet). Direct acquaintance with the external world is a necessary condition for the experience of something and the subsequent reuse of that particular phenomenal content. This is sufficient for the hypothesis presented here. It means that whenever we remember something, a causal chain to the event that is remembered is traced. I propose to interpret memory and mental imagery as perception delayed in time. For instance, when a subject remembers the schoolyard of twenty years ago, what takes place is an effect of the event that took place twenty years before. Conceptually, it is not different from direct perception, except that one must posit additional or different cerebral processes. Such processes, which span considerable time, were once in physical continuity with the external objects to produce an onphene. A process spans space and time. In memory the time span is much larger than in direct perception. Thus memory is a form of delayed perception. Yet, in the past, it had a physical continuity with the external world. For instance, something happens. It produces effects in the brain modifying the structure of the brain. Many years later, these modifications will continue to produce effects related to the original cause. In other words, it is not the subject that recalls something. It is what is recalled that, after some time, produces effects through the subjects (Figure 4b). Instead of assuming a pre-existing subject that recovers something from the past, it is the process of remembering that constitutes the subject. Whenever past events produce an effect, the corresponding process is part of the conscious mind. That it should be recalled as something from the past does not mean that it was not in physical continuity in the past. It also means, however, that the brain has the means of distinguishing between past and present events. That is all.

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Dreams. Dreams are also subject to rigid rules. It is, for example, impossible to dream of ultraviolet or infrared light. Equally, with the exception of some interesting pathological states that themselves follow rigid brain rules, it is most unusual for a person to dream of a “face” with the eyes in a different position than usual, the nose outside and the eyelashes indifferently placed with respect to the eyes. In other words, what occurs in dreams is strictly related to past perceptions, although new combinations may arise. One may dream of a beautiful woman in Rome, even if one has never been with that woman in Rome. The difference with reliable memory is that the original coherency between separate events is lost. In fact dreams do not create new phenomenal experiences (for instance, we cannot have a dream of a new colour that does not belong to the physical spectrum normally perceived). Dreams are a reorganization of past experiences. They are the result of an actual physical continuity between the brain and the external world, into new combinations. Also dreams are to be interpreted as instances of delayed perception where the physical continuity is with a scattered collection of past external events (Figure 4b). This is not, however, an explanation of why we dream of a certain configuration of events, an explanation which is much more properly addressed by psychologists. Non veridical perception (illusions). Whenever we perceive something, which is not real (like a Kanisza’s triangle, or similar optical illusions), is the continuity still possible? Apparently there is no external object with which to be continuous (the triangle is not there). However, in illusions it is assumed that the perception should be different from what it really is. But why should this be so? Is this assumption really necessary? Illusion is a misnomer. A different interpretation is the following: all physical phenomena, which are perceived as equal, are equal. For instance, a Kanisza’s triangle and a “complete” triangle share the same property (namely to have three angles with potentially converging lines). They also share a common neural property, in the sense that the cells that are capable of responding to real lines of specific orientation will also respond to virtual lines of the same orientation, even if somewhat less vigorously (Peterhans and von der Heydt 1991). They belong to the same class of entities, both physically and neurally, although they can

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be classified using different criteria. I propose to see illusions as instances of infrequent correlations among physical events. Slightly more formally, I propose to see illusions as situations where an event C – normally perceived in conjunction with some other event A – is exceptionally perceived in conjunction with some other event B. Using Kanisza’s example, the event C is the “perceived triangle”, the event A is the “geometrical triangle” and the event B is the Kanisza figure. Since C and A usually occur together, it is assumed that the perception of A is equal to the perception of C. This is not the case. When C occurs together with B, an illusion is supposed to explain the different relation among events: it is supposed that A is perceived instead of B. However it is not the case. What is perceived is, as in normal situations, C. The hypothesis of illusions is unnecessary and the continuity with the external physical world is maintained. Phosphenes. Light is not the only stimulus that can cause a visual response. Try looking off to the side and gently pushing and moving your finger on your eye through your eyelids on the other side. You may notice a spot moving on the opposite side of the visual field from where you are pushing. Here, the pressure on your eye is causing a visual response. A visual response caused by stimuli other that the normal entry of light into the pupil is called a phosphene. If you bump your head, you may see stars; these are phosphenes. You can stimulate V1 with an electrode and see light stimuli; these are phosphenes. People with migraine sometimes see patterns of light; these too are phosphenes. The idea of visual phosphenes is related to an idea in neurophysiology called the Law of Specific Nerve Energies. The idea is that no matter how you stimulate a particular receptor or nerve, the signal it sends depends on where the message goes to in the brain. The rather naïve idea that nerves provide a specific phenomenal quality to signal has been eventually rejected. Afterwards other entities have been proposed as causes of content such as brain areas, states of internal workspaces, specific kinds of coding, sensory-motor mappings (for a review, see O' Regan and Noe 2001). A different explanation is the following. What takes place in the brain as a result of the stimulation of a visual area by a non visual stimulus (pressure on the eyeball, electricity, bumping) is also related with a very long past history of visual

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stimuli. As a result it maintains a causal continuity with them. On the other hand we could ask a different question. What would be the phenomenal perceived content if the eyes were disconnected from visual stimuli from the very beginning? If the eyes could not access light but were just subjected to pressures, according to the hypothesis of the existence of some structure (nerve, inner workspace, brain area), the perceived phenomenal content should be a visual phosphene. On the other hand, according to the hypothesis of the continuity with the external world, the phenomenal content should be of tactile nature: the eyes should work as poor tactile receptors. Furthermore, if they were eventually exposed to light, by some technical or surgical means, they should elicit “tactile” phosphenes. Interestingly, although the literature is rather poor on cases like them (for a review, see Senden 1932; Gregory and Wallace 1963), there is the famous case reported by William Cheselden of a born blind patient that, after an operation that partially restored his sight, reported the first visual experiences as having a tactile phenomenal quality: “When he first saw […] that he thought all Objects whatever touch’d his Eyes, (as he express’d it) as what he felt, did his Skin”. Of course, more empirical data is necessary to draw a final conclusion. In all these different situations, a different geometry in the causal relation between the brain and the external world has been used as an explanation for the corresponding conscious experience. Memory, dreams, illusions, object constancy have all been interpreted as cases of perception, though with different kinds of causal relation with the environment. Rather than proposing internal mechanisms capable of creating or recreating internal representations of the external world, I propose to look for direct physical processes (onphenes) linking the internal activity with the physical world. The two, thus linked, constitute the percept.

5 Conclusion Other authors have recently defended a similarly radical view of externalism (Honderich 1998; Honderich 2004; Honderich 2004; Tonneau 2004;

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Rockwell 2005). In particular, Ted Honderich rejected all forms of internalism or cranialism, which take the mind as an internal product of the activity of the brain alone, as being absurd. He developed an alternative view according to which “what it actually is for you to be aware of the room you are in. It is for the room a way to exist.” (Honderich 2004). According to him, perceptual consciousness is a way for the world to exist. Therefore, consciousness is literally out of the cranium as in the proposal presented in this paper: “Phenomenologically, what it is for you to be perceptually conscious is for a world somehow to exist” and “Perceptual consciousness itself is literally to be understood as things existing in a way spatio-temporally” (Honderich 2004). As a result he is lead to identify Consciousness with Existence the two being the same or different perspective on the same state of affairs. This is strikingly similar to the onphene. In the onphene too, existence and phenomenal experience are two different ways of looking at the same thing. Furthermore, we got to the same conclusion, that “perceptual consciousness, like consciousness generally, is something to which the distinction between appearance and reality, and thus talk of phenomenology, does not apply” (Honderich 2000). Another related approach is that described by Strawson who recently claimed that there is a triple identity “between an experience, the subject of the experience of the experience, and the content of the experience” (Strawson 2003). The presented theory brings together externalism, realism and a process-based approach in an attempt at avoiding from the subject/object dichotomy. The enlarged mind is related to Realism (Holt 1914). Realism means literally that the content of our experience is not concocted by our brain but it is identical with the world. Interestingly enough, this position does not entail any ontological commitment about what the world is made of (objects, events, and processes). With the onphene, experience is not only about the real world, experience is the world in its taking place (a part of it). Experience is not a representation of the world, experience is a presentation of the world. The enlarged mind is externalist in the sense that the processes corresponding with the mind are not entirely inside the cranium. They span con-

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siderable time and space (from a few milliseconds in the case of “direct” perception, to days or even years in memory, dream and imagination). Finally, the enlarged mind is based on a process ontology in which there are no separate autonomous entities (objects, primary properties, any kind of substance-based token, individual, types or particular) (Manzotti 2003). Everything takes place. The onphene is the process supporting the enlarged mind: the cause and the effect/the representation and the represented/ the subject and the object being two different perspectives on it. I’d like to suggest that a very similar concept has been poetically expressed by T.S. Eliot’s lyric ‘Burnt Norton’ with these beautiful lines (Eliot 1935): […] the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning. And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now.

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References Chalmers, D. J. and A. Clark (1999). The Extended Mind. Analysis 58(1): 7-19. Crick, F. (1994). The Astonishing Hypothesis: the Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Touchstone. Crick, F. and C. Koch (2003). A Framework for Consciousness. Nature Neuroscience 6(2): 119-126. Davidson, D. (1980). Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dretske, F. (1995). Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press. Edelman, G. M. and G. Tononi (2000). A Universe of Consciousness. How Matter Becomes Imagination. London: Allen Lane. Eliot, T. S. (1935). Burnt Norton. Collected Poems (1909-1935). New York: Harcourt Brace. Gibson, J. J. (1977). The Theory of Affordances. In: Shaw, R.E. and Bransford, J. (Ed.). Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology. Hillsdale (NJ), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Goodman, N. (1978). Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Gregory, R. L. and Wallace, J. G. (1963). Recovery from Early Blindness: A Case Study. Experimental Psychology Society Monograph 2. Griffin, D. R. (1998). Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hameroff, S. R., A. W. Kaszniak, et al. (1996). Toward a Science of Consciousness: The First Tucson Discussions and Debates. Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press.

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Holt, E. B. (1914). The Concept of Consciousness. New York: MacMillan. Holt, E. B., W. T. Marvin, et al. (1910). The Program and First Platform of Six Realists. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 7: 393-401. Honderich, T. (1998). Consciousness as Existence. O'Hear, A. (Ed.). Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137-155. Honderich, T. (2000). Consciousness as Existence Again. Theoria 95: 94-109. Honderich, T. (2004). Consciousness as Existence, Devout Physicalism, Spiritualism. Mind and Matter 2(1): 85-104. Honderich, T. (2004). On Consciousness. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. James, W. (1890/1950). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover. Jennings, C. (2000). In Search of Consciousness. Nature Neuroscience 3(8): 1. Kim, J. (1998). Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Kim, J. (2005). Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Koch, C. (2004). The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach. Englewood: Roberts & Company Publishers. Lycan, W. G. (2001). The Case for Phenomenal Externalism. In: Tomberlin, J.E. (Ed.). Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 15: Metaphysics. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing. Manzotti, R. (2003). A process Based Architecture for an Artificial Conscious Being. In: J. Seibt (Ed.). Process Theories: Crossdisciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories: 285312. Manzotti, R. (2006). Consciousness and Existence As a Process. Mind and Matter: In press.

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Manzotti, R. and Sandini, G. (2001). Does Functionalism Really Deal with the Phenomenal Side of Experience? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(5): 994-994. Manzotti, R. and V. Tagliasco (2001). Coscienza e Realtà. Una Teoria della Coscienza Per Costruttori e Studiosi di Menti e Cervelli. Bologna: Il Mulino. Metzinger, T. (2000). Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Miller, G. (2005). What are the Biological Basis of Consciousness? Science 309(July): 79. O' Regan, K. and Noe, A. (2001). A Sensorimotor Account of Visual Perception and Consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Peterhans, E. and von der Heydt, R. (1991). Subjective Contours – Bridging the Gap Between Psychophysics and Physiology. Trends In Neurosciences 14: 112-119. Phelps, E. A. (2001). Faces and Races in the Brain. Nature Neuroscience 4: 775-776. Place, U. T. (1956). Is consciousness a Brain Process? British Journal of Psychology 47: 44-50. Proust, J. (1999). Mind, Space, and Objectivity in Non-human Animals. Erkenntnis 51(1): 41-58. Quine, W. V. (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge (Mass): Technology Press, MIT. Rees, G., G. Kreiman, et al. (2002). Neural Correlates of Consciousness in Humans. Nature Reviews 3: 261-270. Rockwell, T. (2005). Neither Ghost Nor Brain. Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press. Rowlands, M. (2003). Externalism. Putting Mind and World Back Together Again. Chesham: Acumen Publishing Limited. Senden, V. (1932). Raum und Gestaltauffassung bei Operierten Blindgeborenen vor und nach der Operation (Conception of Space and Gestalt in Congenital Blind Children Before and After Surgery). Leipzig: Verlag Jd Ambrosus Barth.

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On Explanation, Interpretation, and Natural Science with Reference to Freud, Ricoeur, and Von Wright Paul Løvland

1 Introduction The purpose of the present theoretical study is to discuss a possible rôle for natural science in the philosophy of mind and in parts of psychology. First, some schemas for explaining human action are considered based on von Wright’s analysis (1971). Are they causal or intentional? Could there be an analogy between human action and processes in nature, especially chemical processes? Second, could an analogy be of interest to hermeneutics, first and foremost to the interpretation of dreams and vicissitudes of instincts as elaborated by Freud (1900/1991b, 1915/1991a) and discussed by Ricoeur (1970). The crucial point for natural science is the initial state of affairs of human activity, action, and behaviour: instinct, desire, wish, will, intention, and the like. If this state can be related to force or energy we can develop a putative analogy between mental actions and chemical reactions. It is not surprising that I refer to S. Freud in this connection despite the fact that his basic economic/energetic presuppositions have been questioned – and discarded – by many philosophers. A key word for an analogy is “psychic energy”, which entails the concepts of causation and quantity. Or, as the American philosopher W.D.Hart (1988, p.127) phrases it, “The crux of an economic model, in the present state of the art, is whether or not we can make sense of the possibility of psychic energy and, what is necessary for that in the light of our discussion of causation, its conservation at least through wholly intrapsychic processes”. It would

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be a great advantage for the legitimacy of psychic energy if it were possible to measure or calculate it quantitatively, or at least obtain an indication of its amount or degree of intensity. In order to determine the amount of psychic energy we must clarify the type at issue, viz., it may exist in three main modifications: as potential energy such as desire, wish, will, and motivation; as cognitive mental work such as thinking and intuitive activities; as (active) emotions or affects such as joy, sorrow, pleasure, and displeasure. The first modification, motivation, may be experimentally measured by Osgood’s semantic differential (Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum 1957/1978) and in certain cases calculated by information theory (Løvland 1990). The quantity so determined should be conserved while being transformed to the other two modifications, which may be hard to measure quantitatively unless neurophysiological methods indirectly can help us. The explanation schema seems to be causal but this is not at all certain, this is addressed below; it may (also) be intentional. Ricoeur (1970) attempts to employ the notion of psychic energy to interprete aspects of psychoanalysis. His starting point, not surprisingly, is desire where two discourses intersect: one related to meaning and ideas, the other to force or energy. Ricoeur’s major project is to fuse the concept of explanation with that of interpretation. The present paper addresses the issues articulated above from a thermodynamic viewpoint. It seems as if a mental-chemical analogy is viable since it may contribute both to explanation and to interpretation of mental activities including the transformation of motivation. The paper does not touch upon the mind-brain problem.

2 Explanation of Action An action, mental or physical, undertaken by a human being may be causal, teleological, or intentional. But can it also be explained analogically (or homologically) to physical (or chemical) events? Is the explanation schema within the human sciences different from that of the natural sciences?

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Do all actions comply with common laws or principles so that a kind of unified science is possible? There is no doubt that there are very different responses to these questions, and that we live in “two cultures” that are more separated than many people like to admit. Even within the human sciences there are strongly divided views and explanation models: Positivists trying to explain human behaviour causally according to scientific laws, but logical positivists have moderated this view considerably; other human scientists favour a teleological explanation, including intentional models, often combined with hermeneutics which thus leads us from explanation to understanding. The present author (Løvland 1990) has previously published an explanation model based on an analogy between mental and physico-chemical entities. It will be discussed below in connection with the intentional model. 2.1 Intentional Explanation G. H. von Wright is one of the most prominent representatives of the intentional explanation model. He described it briefly by presenting the following schema (von Wright 1971,p.96): -

A intends to bring about p. A considers that he cannot bring about p unless he does a. Therefore A sets himself to do a.

Sometimes this schema is also called practical inference (PI). It is evidently a time-dependent sequence of states and events. The two first are mental, but the last one may be physical. The explanation is of a teleological nature but “turned upside down”, as he says. Von Wright (1971) wonders if the intention or will could be a cause of behaviour after all. He then refers to Hume’s notion of cause, particularly the requirement that cause and effect shall be logically independent of one another. Moreover, he adopts Hempel’s “covering law model”, i.e., that a

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causal explanation shall also be characterised by a law (or regularity) connecting cause and effect, cf., the deductive-nomological concept. Von Wright (1971) mentions that intention or will considered as a cause of physical behaviour has played a very great rôle in philosophic thinking since Descartes. This idea makes it possible to “translate” a teleological explanation of behaviour into a causal one; the teleological purpose (in the future) could be replaced by the will to reach the goal, i.e., “…pushing towards the future from behind” (p. 92). Von Wright evidently prefers the intentional explanation, but admits that many philosophers accept the will as a cause of behaviour in Hume’s sense. Those who deny this, and therefore agree with von Wright, usually give as a reason that the will is not logically independent of the behaviour (effect) and can thus not be a cause (according to Hume). These philosophers apply the so called Logical Connection Argument in order to defend a teleological/intentional explanation; they maintain that the intention or the will to do a certain thing cannot be defined without referring to its object. Hence, the explanation must be teleological or intentional, and von Wright suggests that it complies with the schema presented above. His model is widely accepted but contains the following problem. When von Wright (1971) presented his practical inference schema (p. 96) he “suddenly” emphasised that intention should be void of will, while he previously referred to “intention or will” as if these two notions were fused. When referring to intention earlier in his book he seemed to mean that this term automatically included will. One reason why he excluded (acts of the) will in his schema and solely used intention was that he meant that will belongs mainly to “an artificial terminology invented for philosophical purposes” (p. 95), a metaphor so to speak, and that it is “difficult to relate to the way we actually speak and think about actions” (sic!). Yet he is not denying that other relevant mental concepts like desires, motives, reasons, and wants, which he actually calls forces, can prompt agents to act. And these concepts are obviously akin to will. He even says that “…e.g., desires or wants could have a causal influence on behaviour” (p. 95). This controversial point is crucial for the introduction of natural science to the discourse.

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The researcher who has revolutionized Western culture, thought, and psychology, S. Freud, bases most of his reasoning on unconscious “forces” (energy) such as instincts, needs, wishes, libido, and cathexis, all of which are coupled to purposes and aims; this is especially evident in his paper on vicissitudes of instincts (Freud 1915/1991a). The reasoning is obviously accepted by the prominent hermeneutic philosopher P. Ricoeur (1970), see below. The forces, whether connected to physiological functions in the brain or being purely mental, also affect conscious (secondary) processes where will is a significant constituent. The conscious will, being “free” or determined, will most probably be influenced both by these internal unconscious forces and by external incentives, thereby being part of motivation. Hence, will includes at least partly, mental force or energy directed towards an intended goal. Thus intention to act must definitely also mean (energetic) will to act. If we now conceive of intention as including will in the practical inference schema we could say that will is a cause of action, a goal-directed cause, and the causal and intentional explanation schemas look quite similar. But let us elaborate this issue a little further. Assuming that intention does not contain will we could extend the practical inference schema and include the following sequential steps:

1. Instinct, need 2. Desire, wish, etc. (psychical representative according to Freud (1915/1991a)) 3. Intention, purpose (attention) 4. Will 5. Consideration, assessment (mental work) 6. Action, mental or physical 7. Attained goal

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It is possible to simplify the sequence by fusing some of the steps thus: By fusing the presuppositions 1, 2, 3, and 4 into one group and the work (actions) 5 and 6 into another we can obtain two similar series:

Goal-directed cause Action, work Effect, attained goal

Intention incl. will Action, means Result, attained purpose

The left-hand series can be called causal, the right-hand one intentional. They are identical as schemas but somewhat different regarding terms of the content. But the cause in the former is not a cause in Hume’s sense since he requires logical independence between cause and effect. And we have definitely a logical connection, our cause is dependent on the goal. Since the term cause is somewhat controversial I prefer to apply the term intention and thus intentional explanation schema even when will is involved, although von Wright (1971, p. 97) probably would object. 2.2 Natural Scientific Explanation The intentional explanation model is widely accepted by human scientists and philosophers. In their view positivism has failed, and a unified science seems to be far away. But therefore, are models based on principles of natural science out of the question? All reactions and processes in inorganic matter are causal! If there are causes and effects at all they must be there. Or what? Jung (1928/1973) contends that there are both causality and finality (teleology). The former should be valid for “mechanistic” events, the latter for energetic ones. From a natural scientific point of view this seems strange and artificial. Even mechanistic events can be reduced to energy relations thus making all processes in nature final. And this must be wrong? Inorganic matter has no intention, no meaning.

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Nevertheless, has Jung got a point after all? Let us look at a typical inorganic process without the involvement of a human mind or intention, e.g., the following chemical process: Initial state: Carbon and oxygen Final state: Carbon oxide Here the properties of carbon and oxygen can be called a cause which through a certain intrinsic mechanism, action, or work – leads to an effect which is carbon oxide; evidently a causal reaction made feasible by a “covering law”. The law is energetic: The total amount of energy of the two initial substances is higher than that of the final one; thus the atoms in the initial state rearrange themselves to find the configuration with the lowest possible amount of energy, the final state, where the reaction has come to rest/equilibrium/stability. The difference between the amount of total energy in the final and initial states of the substances I will call potential energy in the present context because it is (part of) the driving force or energy of the reaction. Moreover, it is the intrinsic cause of the reaction. We have now an interesting feature: During the reaction the atoms move towards certain “predetermined” final positions to form the structure of a new substance, they move towards a goal, so to speak. And the amount of potential energy of the reaction is determined also by the amount of energy of the final substance, the “goal”. Hence, the cause includes the goal, we have a goal-directed cause with an effect that in some way is connected to the cause. According to the three-step explanation series presented above the principle of a goal-directed human action is similar to an intentional one, when will is involved. Consequently, it is tempting to suggest that there is an analogy of explanation between a chemical reaction and an intentional action, as we phrased it above, including will. Perhaps we can even say that the explanation schemas of two such processes are identical, but that the terms of the involved entities are analogous. (We should recall that an intentional action could be wholly mental like cognitive work, not involving physical actions at all.) Thus the two analogous sequences could read:

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Goal-directed cause, incl. amount of initial energy E1

Intention, incl. will

Reaction, chemical work

Action, means

Effect, attained goal, incl. amount of final energy E2

Result, attained purpose

The difference between E2 and E1 makes up the potential energy, which is transformed to work, thus: Potential energy

Chemical work

The analogous intentional series can be expressed as follows if we use the common term “motivation” for all various mental forces, be they conscious or unconscious, including will: Motivation

Mental action (incl. consideration, assessment)

Thus, mental potential energy, motivation, can be transformed to cognitive mental action/work, which is a kind of energy (to obtain a purpose). Freud (1915/1991a, 1915/1991c, 1915/1991d) holds in several contexts that unconscious forces, e.g., libido and tension, may discharge directly in the unconscious or lead to secondary processes in the preconscious and consciousness, even including emotions. Thus motivation may transform also to emotions so that we have the following equation for quantities if we believe the analogy to the 1st law of thermodynamics – the conservation of energy: Motivation = Cognitive activity + Emotions

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This is analogous to an irreversible chemical reaction if we include the amount of (calorimetric) entropy which is related to heat: Potential energy (E2-E1) = Chemical work + Heat (produced in the system)

(For further explanation, see Løvland 1990.) We then have to define heat as being analogous to active emotions created during the process as a result of cognitive work, these emotions being e.g., joy, happiness, irritation, sorrow, and – I will emphasise – pleasure. The analogy is not illogical since neither emotion nor heat contains images or objects. What can we use this analogy for? Whether it is considered as a metaphor or not it has been of valuable help for pioneers such as S. Freud, C.G. Jung, J. Breuer, J.F. Herbart, and others. Even P. Ricoeur accepted the notion of desire as a force in his interpretation of psychoanalysis, ref. below. If we apply the analogy between mental and chemical processes fully according to thermodynamics (and to statistical mechanics) we find an astonishing relationship. The above mentioned potential energy for the chemical process is confined internally to the system of substances. But there can also be another amount of potential energy added to the system from outside during the process. This amount becomes part of the total entropy of the system, and it is thus related to heat. Heat can be added to, or rather absorbed by, the system thereby increasing the potential energy. This is possible due to an atomic rearrangement of the structure during the process, i.e., when the process leads to end products that are structurally more disordered than are the initial substances, e.g., when the former contains more molecules than the latter does, cf., Boltzmann’s order principle. Conversely, when the structure of the end products are more orderly arranged than that of the initial substances heat (and entropy) is expelled from the system, which then looses potential energy. What is the mental analogue of heat being exchanged between a chemical system and its environment? The heat produced in the system is analogously called active emotions, so that the former should also be associated with emotions, but not with active ones. The analogue of exchanged heat must stimulate or diminish motivation; there must be “something” in the environment

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that inspires or depresses the subject, perhaps regulating arousal. What this “something” is does not matter for the moment; the crucial point in our context is the corresponding mental phenomena, first of all changes in motivation. What could then be more natural than to call this analogue “potential emotions”? The other corresponding phenomenon is the change in mental structure, i.e., in the degree of order and disorder. A mental orderly structure is for instance a mind containing no, or solely one, image or object, while a disorderly one consists of many quickly changing mental representations, as e.g., in dreams. The connection between motivation and mental structure could then presumably be analogous to the one in chemistry. If this analogy holds it opens for interesting interpretations. I have discussed various possibilities in other papers, see below, but these shall not be dealt with here. A few examples, however, will be indicated. We may now formulate the presumed mental process as follows: Internal motivation Plus or minus potential emotions = Total motivation (driving energy)

Cognitive mental work Plus active emotions

The model is described in more detail by Løvland (1990) and applied to study the concept of “affective meaning” (Løvland 1992, 1993). Its relationship to perception and aesthetics is also discussed (Løvland 1996). The papers include its perhaps most interesting feature which is the empirical nature that allows us to carry out at least semi-quantitative experimental measurements of the strength or intensity of motivation/potential emotions. It is probably most challenging to test the novel hypothesis pertaining to the correlation of potential emotions and structural order of images or concepts. When a particular type of picture is shown to a subject it may arouse emotions or affects in his mind. These emotions are probably, at least in the first instance, not ac-

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tive, rather potential and related to motivation, as also agreed by Berlyne (1960) and Arnheim (1966). Two aspects of the picture may determine the intensity of these emotions: 1) The ideational content. 2) The degree of order/disorder as compared to the initial state, i.e., the change of structural order during the process. - It should be possible to keep the content fairly constant, while varying the degree of order, e.g., by presenting the same word/image in different ways and numbers, with different colours, or with different letter types. The effect on the aroused emotions/motivation is then measured by a modification (Løvland 1990, 1993) of Osgood’s “semantic differential” (Osgood et al 1957/1978), which is primarily a psycholinguistic method. The measurement is briefly described thus: The subject is shown a concept/word that is associated with a set of bipolar adjectives which are located at either end of a ranking scale, e.g., strong at one end and weak at the other; a number e.g., between 0 and 5, is given to about 10 such bipolar adjectives according to the emotional intensity that the word/image creates; an average is calculated from these numbers which then represents the amount or intensity of the motivation created by the picture/image/word in point. This amount is compared with the degree of order in the pictures, and we may be able to semiquantitatively verify or falsify the rôle of potential emotions in the explanation model described above. It could be possible that part of the aroused motivation was quickly transformed to active emotions, but whether we measured potential or active emotions, or a mixture of them, the resulting score could nevertheless represent the intensity of the former. In certain cases the experiment can be made more accurate if we also quantify the degree of order in the pictures. A change of order from one picture to another is related to information and uncertainty which is mathematically elaborated in information theory, see e.g., Attneave (1959). A controlled change of order, e.g., from one to several objects in the pictures, is logarithmically related to the amount in bits of information (or statistical entropy) which I contend is proportional to the amount of potential emotions (Løvland 1990). Hence, we can check if the measured motivation corresponds quantitatively to that calculated from the degree of order.

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While the internal, initial motivation is clearly intentional the assumed potential emotions are not. Yet the latter may contribute to the intensity of the total motivation. We see here clearly and explicitly the double nature of intentions, which are part of motivation: One aspect related to the content, the idea or meaning, of a mental object; the other to the force, intensity, (potential) energy, quota of affects, or whatever one wants to call it. The latter aspect relates both to internal motivation and to the potential emotions.

3 Interpretation and Natural Science Above it is held that an intentional explanation model for mental action is schematically identical to one for natural sciences, specifically regarding chemical processes. But, of course, the entities and terms in the schemas are different since chemical substances do not contain ideas or meaning. The terms in the two schemas may, however, be analogous. But what about hermeneutics? Could there be a useful link between interpretation and natural science? Many researchers today hold that there are none. Nevertheless, two giants in continental philosophy and psychology, respectively P. Ricoeur and S. Freud, have based many of their ideas on exactly principles of natural science. Freud’s energetics (economy, metapsychology, e.g., 1915/1991a) is well known; it is a cornerstone not only of psychoanalysis but of aspects of psychology as well. Ricoeur (1970) evidently agrees with Freud’s fundamental explanation based on energy or force and tries to apply it to interpretation. His project was mainly to link the two major discourses, viz., that of explanation and that of interpretation of action. He did it with respect to both text and to (mental) energy. It is the latter that is dealt with here. Freud’s energetics used in psychoanalytic theory has been criticised by scientists for being just a metaphor of the “phlogistic sort” (Ricoeur 1970, p. 359), cf., von Wright above, not representing “real” energy; his critics maintain that it is not an observational science, rather subject to interpretation. Nevertheless, Ricoeur (1970) sets himself to mediate between science and hermeneutics, a work that is focused on two aspects of Freud’s research, viz.,

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interpretation of dreams and vicissitudes of instincts. The aspects are dealt with below but only parts pertinent for the present paper are discussed. 3.1 Interpretation of Dreams A dream, according to Freud (1900/1991b), is the accomplishment or fulfilment of a repressed wish, or desire as Ricoeur (1970) prefers to call it. But the dream has a manifest content that is “transposed or distorted” during the dream-work, according to Freud. It is this content that must be interpreted in order to disclose its real meaning including the original, repressed wish or desire. Ricoeur holds (p.90) that the “Interpretation cannot be developed without calling into play concepts of an entirely different order, energy concepts”. And moreover (p.91), he maintains that in addition to their narrative aspect dreams are related to wishes and desires that throw them back on the side of “energy, conatus, appetition, will to power, libido, or whatever one wishes to call it”. He contends that dreams lie at the “intersection of meaning and force”. If a dream is the fulfilment of a repressed wish the fulfilment belongs to the discourse of meaning and the repression to the discourse of force. The manifest dream is thus a fusion of these two concepts as the force has distorted the meaning. Obviously Ricoeur believes that Freud’s energy concept helps interpreting and understanding a dream. Unfortunately, Ricoeur does not involve the quantity of force, how strong the force is; he merely refers to force generally. Perhaps it would be more helpful for the interpretation if we could anticipate how intense the wish is or how strong the desire is. We must assume that there are several unconscious wishes with different intensities. Is the wish leading to a dream more important or more intense than are other wishes which did not create dreams? Will a strong wish produce a more vivid and clear dream than do weaker wishes? Or on the other hand, would a strong wish lead to such forceful dream-work that the manifest dream would be more difficult to interpret? Responses to quantitative energetic/economic questions like these seem to be relevant in order to interpret a dream and to understand the content of the unconscious.

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Direct measurement of the intensity of an unconscious wish is impossible with Osgood’s method (Osgood et al 1978) during dreaming. Yet a measurement of the wish in the awake, conscious state may indicate how intense it is; the emotional arousal caused by a crucial image or concept from the dream can then be evaluated and ranked by the subject as mentioned above. Reverting to the thermodynamic analogy described above, viz., the connection between the order of the mental structure and the total motivation, we may draw a somewhat discouraging conclusion. Prior to dreaming, while sleeping, the consciousness is empty of mental representations or images, i.e., the mental structure is very much ordered; when dreaming starts the consciousness is rapidly filled with extremely disordered or chaotic images, a structural change that is accompanied by an increase in total motivation caused by the added potential emotion which is void of meaning. This means that the unconscious wish during dreaming receives extra energy, which was not there initially. Hence, a vague and feeble wish may be reinforced and result in a clear and vivid manifest dream. In the extreme case a negative wish, an aversion so to speak, may lead to a dream if the amount of extra energy is sufficiently high. Another case is the situation where several wishes have about equal initial motivation. Which one, if any, will become a dream? We can imagine that the wish leading to the greatest increase of mental structural disorder will be the “successful winner” since it receives the greatest amount of extra energy. It is a pity that these speculations confuse the understanding we hope to obtain of the unconscious. 3.2 Vicissitudes of Instincts The description of instincts below is based on Freud (1915/1991a). Instincts have a somatic origin but are represented in the mind by ideas, i.e., “psychical representatives” such as wish, libido, interest, and purpose, which are expressions of a constant force that demand work from the mind. Ideas or group of ideas are “cathected with a definite quota of psychical energy (libido or interest) coming from an instinct” (p. 152). Freud (1915/1991c) also uses the term “quota of affect” in connection with repression.

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Ricoeur (1970) evidently accepts this view and bases his discussion on the notion of this ideational (psychical) representative, which he includes in his reasoning in the following way: “…the interpretation of meaning through meaning and the explanation by means of energies localised in systems intersect and coincide in this notion” (p. 116). In the language of the present author we may say that we have a fusion of meaning/ideas/purpose and potential energy in intention. Mental processes starting with such energised wish or desire will proceed along two parallel lines if we shall believe Ricoeur (1970): 1) Transformation or distortion of ideas or meaning subject to interpretation. 2) Transformation of (potential) energy or quota of affect subject to explanation. - Ricoeur attempted to join these two categories of discourse, but succeeded in doing it merely with the starting point, the psychical representative, e.g., the desire. Ideas derived from desire, actually the objects of desire, he interpreted without direct reference to energy or force. The potential energy of desire, quota of affect, tension, etc. is transformed separately to discharge-affects, especially anxiety. Freud (1915/1991c) also says that the vicissitude of the quota of affect is detached from the idea (p. 152). So it seems that Ricoeur did not fully attain his final aim, to join interpretation and energetic explanation for the vicissitudes of instincts. Yet, as with dreams, the energising of desire or wish should support the interpretation. My own psychoenergetic model described above is similar to Freud’s in that motivation may be transformed to mental work, and that this work could be cognitive (intellectual or intuitive), resulting in vicissitudes of instincts such as repression and sublimation, and in emotions/affects such as anxiety, pleasure, and displeasure. Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference: Freud (1915/1991c) (and Ricoeur) believes that the (potential) energy that is part of the motivation is discharged directly to affects thus leaving the ideational line of derivatives, which in this way becomes devoid of energy. My own model, on the other hand, which is strictly confined to thermodynamic analogues, explains these (active) emotions/affects as products of the mental work, actually caused by the work as a kind of “internal friction”. But both mental work and emotions are types of energy derived originally from

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the potential energy of motivation, which consequently wanes. The emotions or affects thus formed from ideas will be “qualitatively coloured” (Freud 1915/1991c, p. 153), a phenomenon that I prefer to interpret in the following way: 1) If the motivational goal is reached the produced affects will be positive, i.e. pleasant. If it is not reached they will be negative, i.e. unpleasant. 2) The final transformed idea or image will be intrinsically positive or negative for the current subject. We are thus linked to Freud’s pleasure principle, which I apply as follows: Transformed ideas causing pleasant emotions are wanted by the subject, no further transformation is needed, the motivation has waned to zero, cf., low tension. Transformed ideas causing unpleasant emotions are not wanted by the subject who tries to remove or “improve” them by “refilling” an amount of potential energy, or quota of affect, to the motivation, cf., high tension. In other words, for unpleasant emotions: Motivation (energetic intention) is transformed to Mental work (energy) on ideas causing Unwanted emotions/affects (coloured energy) creating New motivation …… more work …… and so forth. This may be a kind of intentional process, see above, but the resulting emotions are not intended; they are a kind of by-product of the mental work. A proper term for the new motivation may be “affective meaning”, which is elaborated elsewhere (Løvland 1992, 1993). Also Ricoeur (1970) split the energy discourse (affects) from the ideational discourse (meaning). But is it possible to rejoin them by the affectmeaning explanation described above? Can the latter help to interpret mental processes leading to derived ideas, images, narratives, etc? This must be up to hermeneutic philosophers, but it is not impossible to presume that it can improve the understanding of intention behind an action. This intention may be

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even better understood if we measure the amount of new motivation/affective meaning with Osgood’s semantic differential, see above. Above it was suggested that the amount or intensity of total motivation could be increased or diminished by the change of structural order during a mental process. In conscious work this effect is probably moderate, but when the change is unusually big, e.g., when an empty consciousness suddenly is flooded with disordered images from the unconscious, the effect may be significant. The latter may occur in processes such as dreaming and meditation, and in psychoanalysis. Then low motivation may lead to strong effects.

4 Final Remarks Above I suggested that intentional and causal explanation of action follow identical schemas although they have different contents. The presupposition for this suggestion is that intention is not merely attention but also involves will. Intuitively this seems plausible when the intention is to act, physically or mentally, to reach the intended goal. However, quite a few philosophers do not agree with this opinion, but those psychologists who accept Freud’s economic/energetic apparatus will probably support it. And the latter persons may do this despite the fact that will in this context is conscious, while Freud’s driving forces are included in unconscious desires, wishes, etc. We have to assume that will is not “free” but influenced by or containing, among other things, these forces. But, of course, I maintain that will contains its own force or energy; otherwise it will be in the hands of and directed fully by the forces in the unconscious wishes and not be able to oppose them, something that it evidently does in many cases. I consider will as part of motivation, which I hold, contains all various forces and motives whether they belong to the consciousness or to the unconscious. The analogy between chemical reactions and mental actions becomes more credible if the explanation schema of the former is intentional, as proposed above. Unfortunately, the mental-energetic analogy in Freud’s and Ricoeur’s writings referenced above is somewhat ambiguous. It is not quite

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clear what they mean by the notion of psychic energy. Is it just identical to what I call potential energy? In that case it is only relevant for motivation, desire, wish, etc. Or, is it also included in derived and transformed ideas in mental processes? Freud talks about cathected ideas. But does that mean potential energy or just activity? And, are the discharge-affects also energy? Ricoeur definitely separates the discourse of ideas from that of energy in his treatment of the vicissitudes of instincts, but not unambiguously in the interpretation of dreams. A problem for interpreters is, of course, that different ideas or meanings can contain the same amount of (mental) energy. Consequently, a “covering law” for action is hard to imagine for meanings but easier for the underlying, disguised transformation of energy. In this connection I will emphasise the possible link between mental structure and intensity of total motivation, as described above. The former does not contain meaning in our context, solely a defined degree of order that corresponds to a definite amount of total motivation. This is possibly the greatest and most novel contribution of thermodynamics to the analogous mental processes. Perhaps a more appropriate analogy would have been obtained by using the thermodynamics for processes far from equilibrium, but the same correlation between structure and total motivation would, by and large, remain.

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References Arnheim, R. (1966). Toward a Psychology of Art. Berkely: University of California Press. Attneave, F. (1959). Application of Information Theory to Psychology. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Inc. Berlyne, D.E. (1960). Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. New York: McGraw-Hill. Freud, S. (1991a). Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.). The Penguin Freud Library (Vol.11, 2nded., pp.105-138). Harmondsworth: Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc. (Original work published 1915) Freud, S. (1991b). The Interpretation of Dreams. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.). The Penguin Freud Library (Vol.4, 2nd ed., chap. 6 and 7). Harmondsworth: Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc. (Original work published 1900) Freud, S. (1991c). Repression. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.). The Penguin Freud Library (Vol.11, 2nd ed., pp. 139-158). Harmondsworth: Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc. (Original work published 1915) Freud, S. (1991d). The Unconscious. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.). The Penguin Freud Library (Vol. 11, 2nd ed. pp. 159-222). Harmondsworth: Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc. (Original work published 1915) Hart, W.D. (1988). The Engines of the Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jung, C.G. (1973). On Psychic Energy. In W. McGuire (Ed.), R.F.C. Hull (Trans.). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series XX (Vol.8, 3rd paperback printing). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1928) Løvland, P. (1990). Thoughts on Structure, Meaning, and Psychic Energy. Journal of Indian Psychology, 8:1-11. Løvland, P. (1992). Some Psychophysical Aspects of Meaning. Journal of Indian Psychology, 10 : 48-58.

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Løvland, P. (1993). Meaning, Motivation, and Disorder. Thermodynamic Model and Possible Experiment. Journal of Indian Psychology, 11:1-8. Løvland, P. (1996). A Scientific Analysis of Ordinary and Aesthetic Perception. Journal of Indian Psychology, 14:1-8. Osgood, C.E., Suci, G.J., & Tannenbaum, P.H. (1978). The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. (Original work published 1957) Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. (D. Savage, Trans.). (Book II, pp. 65-157). New Haven: Yale University Press. Wright, G.H. von (1971). Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Personal Identity, the Self and Time Howard Robinson

PART I: THE POWER OF PARFIT

1 Introduction I have argued elsewhere that the self must be a simple and immaterial entity, somewhat on the model of a ‘Cartesian ego’ (Robinson 2003 pp. 92-8). I am not concerned to repeat those arguments here, nor is it necessary for the reader of this paper to know what they are, except that they rest on certain fundamental intuitions concerning personal identity. (In fact, the intuitions concern identity under particular counterfactual circumstances, namely those related to our origin. But this fact need not concern us now.) Cartesian views are, of course, very unfashionable. Most philosophers like to believe that our intuitions about what persons are, and about their identity conditions, can be saved within a more naturalistic framework. In this paper I shall be denying that this is possible, and trying thereby to give support to the Cartesian perspective. My strategy is twofold. First I shall argue that the adoption of a naturalistic or even moderate property dualist ontology commits one to Derek Parfit’s radically reductive theories of personal identity and the self. I shall not here try directly to refute Parfit’s theory, though I shall briefly give reasons for trying to avoid it. Secondly, I shall try to develop a theory of the self that avoids Parfitianism, and I shall do this by reconsidering the self’s relation to time. This conclusion will, I hope, be consistent with the defence of a Cartesian theory referred to above. At least since Williams (1956-7), the debate about personal identity has been pretty continuous. The contest has mainly been between those, like Williams, who take some form of bodily criterion as constitutive of identity, and

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those, championed by Parfit (1984), who adopt a psychological criterion. The debate largely centres around the intuitions we have about certain problematic – usually science-fictional – cases. The assumption is that the winner is – or would be – the one who could show that his theory deals with these cases in accord with our intuitions about, and, hence, our concept of, personal identity. In the first part of this paper I shall argue that the power of Parfit’s position is more or less independent of these considerations, resting on ontological assumptions that are common to almost everyone in the debate. Those who want to reject Parfit’s theory, must reject the common ontology. Having rejected that ontology, in the second part, I try to develop a concept of the self, that, unlike Parfit’s, is non-reductionist.

2 The Basic Argument In this section I state the essential case for the power of Parfit’s position. Almost everyone in the debate, apart from a few substance dualists, accepts the following assumptions, which constitute what I shall call the Accepted Ontology. (1) There are human bodies. (2) There are mental states ‘associated with’ or ‘belonging to’ these bodies. (It does not matter for present purposes whether these mental states are themselves thought of as physical.) (3) The mental states of a given person are related with each other over time roughly in the way that Parfit characterizes as continuity and connectedness (henceforward, ‘C and C relations’), and, if they were not so connected there would, at the very least, not be a normal person there. (4) There is no further entity – such as an immaterial substance – responsible for the identity through time of the person.

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The problem cases imagined mainly fall into three groups. (i) Fission: the splitting of a brain into its two hemispheres and putting each into a separate body. (ii) Teletransportation: the dissolution of a body into energy and the ‘beaming up’ of this to another location where it is reconstituted into the same form as the original body. (iii) Straightforward replication or copying of a human brain and body, with or without the survival of the original. It is my contention that in terms of the Accepted Ontology, there is no relevant dispute about the facts in any of these cases, and so the dispute about personal identity must be empty for anyone who accepts that ontology. In the case of fission, all agree about what happens to the body, and what the C and C relations are after the fission. With teletransportation, there may be a doubt about whether one has the same body or not, depending on how the process itself is described, but this uncertainty can apply equally to the supporter of either theory. Phenomenologically speaking, C and C relations are preserved. With replication, it is agreed that there is a different body with apparent C and C relations to the original. What, then, in terms of the Accepted Ontology, is the argument about? It seems that Parfit must be correct in saying that there can be something to argue about only if there is a ‘further fact’ than those constituted by facts about the body and about C and C relations, and this could be so only if one rejected (4) and allowed some further ‘”self” fact’. On the ontology in (1) to (4), if A and B are psychologically connected, and A and C are not, but A and C are somatically connected and A and B are not, those are all the facts. The further question ‘but which of B or C is the same person as A?’ has no further factual content. It is worth labouring this latter point because it is so natural to take the further fact for granted, without noticing it. It is, for example, quite natural to think that there is an important distinction between the kind of continuity one might get with fission and that involved in replication, namely, that continuity of consciousness might actually carry on through the process of fission, whereas in replication there cannot be any actual overlap of contents, only (possibly instantaneous) reproduction of something similar. It is natural to take this fact as evidence that it is or might be really you that survives in the former, but it is not in the latter. But, on the Accepted Ontology, what is this ‘you’ that ‘really

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continues’? There are only different facts about how the C and C relations operate, and about relations of bodies. Given that it is not evidence for something further, why should the fact that one situation could, in principle, sustain unbroken continuity and the other could not, be, of and in itself, a major consideration? In fact, slippage of this kind goes back to the language Locke used in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke 1690/1894/1959) when first formulating the memory criterion of personal identity. He adapts it from his account of the identity through time of organisms. That being then one plant which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of the same life, thought that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant ... (Essay II.27.5)

One might wonder what this ‘common life’ is supposed to be, especially in the light of his rejection of Aristotelian ‘substantial forms’. The important nineteenth century editor of the Essay, Alexander Campbell Fraser, adds the simultaneously unhelpful and revealing note: It is only in the loose sense in which the ‘organisation’ which is visible, can be identified with the ‘life’ which is invisible. (Locke 1959, p. 443)

Locke’s language reifies ‘the same consciousness’ in much the same way as it does ‘the same life’ – the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person ... (Essay II.27.10) For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come ... (Essay II.27.12.)

Locke’s language, on both these issues, is sometimes reductionist, but sometimes suggests that some further, real entity supervenes on, or is immanent in, the continuities that underlie it. No doubt this slide happens uncon-

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sciously in Locke, and a similar shift is liable to occur in us when we think we are thinking in terms of a reformed and reductive ontology. Does what I have shown so far really amount to proving that Parfit is right? I have argued that, within the framework of the Accepted Ontology there are two kinds of continuity, that defined by sameness of body and that defined by C and C relations and that there is no room for a further fact about personal identity as such. I have treated this as a victory for Parfit, within the Accepted Ontology, but it might be argued that it is open to someone to prefer to associate himself with the identity of his body rather than with his stream of consciousness, so long as he did not think that thereby he was capturing what personal identity really was. This is perfectly true. Within Parfit’s Humean mould, you can prefer anything you like – including, in Hume’s example, the destruction of the whole world to the pricking of your finger. But in so far as we are in fact interested in experiential survival, then psychological connectedness is the only thing with a direct appeal. To prefer being the same body when one does not see this as the key to being the same person, but simply being the same body, per se, seems to lack any rationale. (We shall return to this in the discussion of ‘animalism’ below.)

3 First Response: Johnston’s Defence of ‘Further Facts’ Quite counter to my criticism of Locke, Mark Johnson has argued in various places, but especially his (1992), that the existence of a ‘further fact’ about identity – and other things – is consistent with a reductionist ontology. According to Johnston, ordinary commonsense facts are, in general, autonomous and not dependent on one’s preferred theoretical ontology. It is proper to hold that normal people are free agents whether or not one believes in ‘uncaused volitions’, and whether or not one is a determinist. One believes that tomorrow is yet to come whether or not one accepts ‘a moving NOW’ or a block universe. Similarly, issues about the identity of human beings can be fixed in the normal ways whether or not one accepts Cartesian egos or just bodies

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with associated mental events. Johnston calls belief in the resilience of ordinary conceptual practice in the face of metaphysical differences, ‘Minimalism’. Johnston’s position is complex and, perhaps, sometimes overgeneralized. One might be tempted to think that some of our conceptual practices are dependent on a certain metaphysical background, and others are not. Johnston, via his doctrine of ‘Minimalism’, talks as if none of them are. Johnston, for example, seems to believe that adopting a ‘redundancy’ theory of truth, and rejecting Parfit’s claims that his theory of personal identity has ethical consequences, are both instances of ‘minimalism’, and, therefore, parts of the same general strategy. It is difficult to believe that the kinds of considerations that enter into these questions have anything interesting in common. But, in the present context, I am only concerned with whether adopting the Accepted Ontology gives a rationale to the psychological criterion, or whether, as Johnston claims, our common sense views on identity are untouched. In fact, the point I am making in this section is not essentially ad hominem against Johnston. It concerns a quite general thesis which is widely and naturally held. It is that we have many vital conceptual practices that do not concern themselves with basic ontology and which are not affected by different views on basic ontology, and talk about persons is one such vital conceptual practice. It can hardly be denied that what is said in this general thesis is often true: not all our conceptual practices are dependent on our views about basic ontology – indeed, perhaps few of them are. In order to sort out how such dependence might work, when it does occur, I shall distinguish between two kinds of truth-makers for factual claims. The distinction is between those that are crucially wholly world dependent and those that are crucially concept dependent. If I claim that there are two billiard balls on the table, concepts are, of course, involved in this claim. But, in ordinary circumstances, the nature of the world entirely determines, for all practical circumstances, how the world fits those concepts. The same applies under normal circumstances if I say that there are two people in this room or that I am the same person as I was yesterday. But the situation is different under the following circumstances: (i)

it is contentious how a concept applies in a given case:

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(ii)

this contentiousness is not thought to be a reflection of ‘what there is’ over and above what is determined by the application of the concept in that case: (iii) even if there is a fact to be discovered about what decision our concept would deliver, there is no reason why there should not be or have been a counterpart concept which delivers the same result in uncontentious cases, but that delivered the opposite decision in the contentious ones. When these three conditions are met, the truthmaker is crucially concept dependent. When a fact is concept dependent in this way, it is merely a form of conceptual conservatism to insist on the factual status of claims using the present concept, rather than allowing equal propriety to a ‘fact’ articulated by using one of the counterpart concepts. In this case, the ‘further fact’ is not a ‘solid’ fact, but is a revisable, conventional matter. It is clear why it should be thought that this pattern applies in the case of personal identity. (i) applies because it is contentious how the concept of person applies in the thought-experiment cases. (ii) applies for anyone accepting the Accepted Ontology, because the raw materials supplied in those assumptions just generate facts about bodily and psychological continuity that are agreed by all. Only by appealing to intuitions about the content of the concept of a person can the issue be further decided. It seems, then, that (iii) is the only possible area for dispute. It must be claimed that it is not merely contingent that we have the precise concept that we do. Prima facie, it is difficult to see why this should be so. It is agreed on all sides that the bodily criterion and the psychological criterion give the same results for all normal cases: this is why science-fictional thought experiments are required to bring out the difference. Suppose we somehow discovered or decided that our linguistic-conceptual practices, at a deep level, really confirmed the bodily criterion. I can see no reason in theory or practice why those of another community could not similarly confirm the psychological one. As they both work for all the actual cases that have so far occurred neither could be dysfunctional. For similar reasons, if teletransportation, brain-transplanting, etc, became actual practices, a Parfit might recommend that we change our linguistic practices and hence our

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concepts so as to accommodate them. If the ontology stated in our assumptions is correct, then the protest ‘but they would still not really be the same person’, can mean no more than ‘that is not exactly how we have so far used the concept ‘person’. If the argument of this section is correct, ‘further facts’ that are crucially concept dependent are not solid facts and are open to revisions in the way Parfit suggests.

4 Second Response: Wiggins on the Unavailability of the Psychological Criterion The next response is more basic, in that it denies that there are two genuine theories of personal identity to choose between. I associate this line of argument with David Wiggins (2001), and it is a continuation of the Butler-Reid objection to the psychological criterion, which was that it cannot be stated without presupposing the personal identity it was meant to define. The psychological criterion essentially invokes first-personal memory, and that is memory of doing something oneself, so identity with the subject of the remembered experience is presupposed in the account of that experience itself. Wiggins’s position, then, fits in with the approved ontology, but in an antiParfitian way, because he holds that we know what ‘same human being’ is, and we can define forms of psychological connection only in terms of this more basic identity. Parfit attempts to answer this problem by introducing the concept of a quasi-memory, of which, he says, memory is a species: I have an accurate quasi-memory of a past experience if (1) I seem to remember having an experience, (2) someone did have this experience and (3) my apparent memory is causally dependent, in the right way, on the past experience.” (Parfit 1984, p. 220, quoted Wiggins 2001, p. 213)

The ‘someone’ who had this experience need not be me: more especially, it need not have been associated with this body.

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Wiggins objects that ‘the right way’, as it occurs in (3), is a question begging expression. The normal way is through certain mechanisms that run through the nervous system of a particular body. Ex hypothesi, this does not apply in the cases where it was not I who had the original experience, so what would make something ‘the right way’ for quasi-memory? Wiggins reinforces this point by saying that it is no accident that Parfit defines accurate quasimemory. Real memory is a faculty that can be accurate or not. The fact that Parfit provides no notion of quasi-memory which allows it to be inaccurate shows, both that memory is not a species of it and that it is improperly tied up with the notion of ‘the right way’. The ‘right mechanism’ for memory is not one that gives invariably accurate memories, but quasi-memory requires accuracy to be individuated at all. At first sight, Wiggins’s criticism seems powerful, but I think that it is not. I do not see why one could not characterize ‘the right way’ as any mechanism that tended to preserve the information in the original experience with that degree of accuracy and detail roughly commensurate with the degree to which it is preserved in present, intra-body, cases. The same degree of similarity must also apply to the phenomenology. Provided that the mechanism involved in the quasi-memory was reasonably common, one could find cases where it worked more or less accurately. Furthermore, real memory mechanisms must tend to work accurately, otherwise they could not be identified as memory mechanisms, so the requirement of general accuracy is not a constraint only in the case of quasi-memory. One defines something by its paradigm instance, which, for memory, must be when it operates correctly. Although Wiggins’s development of the Butler-Reid strategy does not seem to me to work, there is something potentially problematic in Parfit’s definition of quasi-memory. The first condition in the definition is ‘I seem to remember having an experience’. This appears to accept that the experience in question essentially presents the event remembered as belonging to me. The rest of the definition shows that this condition is defeasible, but, nevertheless, its prima facie being the case that I was the original subject of the experience is built into the content of the memory experience itself. This would seem to exclude a wholly reductive account of the self through time, which would

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involve explaining what it is for an experience at t and one at t-n to belong to the same subject whilst characterizing those experiences in a wholly neutral way regarding their ownership. If one were to attempt to analyse identity through time in terms of quasi-memory as Parfit here defines it, the most one could achieve would be to give an account of which of the previous existing persons I am, namely, that with which I am maximally Q-related. The very idea of something in the past’s being me, is still a primitive. Whether this is a stable position, I am not sure, but it might correspond to the non-reductive version of Locke’s position discussed above: the notion of ‘same consciousness’ is taken as primitive, and the memory criterion provided for when it applies. It is not obvious, however, that Parfit cannot improve on the definition quoted above. He would need to replace ‘I seem to remember having an experience’ by ‘I seem to remember an experience from the first person perspective’. The issue then is whether the italicised expression is more than a euphemism for seeming to remember having it myself. This is a question of whether that kind of experience – that is, the first-personal – can be identified phenomenologically independently of thinking of it as seeming to be one’s own. Could one not equally think of it as ‘from the owner’s point of view, whoever that may be’? I do not see why not, given that one can attribute experiences like one’s own to others. Even if there were a version of the Butler-Reid argument that worked, within the framework of the Accepted Ontology, it could only support animalism, and the problems with that we shall see in the next two sections.

5 Third Response: Olson and the ‘Two Coincident Thinkers’ Objection. Eric Olson (2001) objects to the psychological criterion on the grounds that it entails that there are two physical beings at the same place and time thinking the same thoughts, namely the person and the animal. Furthermore, you have no grounds on which to make up your mind which of the two you are. His reasoning is as follows. It is agreed on all hands that the person thinks. The

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follower of the psychological criterion distinguishes between the person and the animal. But the animal undoubtedly has everything in the way of brain and nervous system that is necessary for thought, so the animal also thinks – and thinks the same things as the person, because they ‘share’ the same brain. And, as they have exactly similar mental lives, I have no way of knowing which I am. If correct, this would undoubtedly be a reductio of the psychological criterion. The mistake, I think, is to move from the claim that the thoughts occur in, or in immediate causal dependence on, the animal’s brain, to the conclusion that it is the animal that has the thoughts, in the sense of its being the conscious subject or thinker of the thoughts. The advocate of the psychological criterion is no more committed to there being two sets of thoughts going on in association with a particular human being, than a computer programmer is committed to saying that there are two calculations going on in a computer, one in the operations of the programme and the other in the hardware. The hardware is, of course doing all the right things to have the calculations going on in it, but it is from the perspective of the programme that these things are a process of calculation. Similarly, for someone who upholds the psychological criterion, it is the appropriate kind of functional unity that binds together the mental contents that constitutes their subject. This functional unity is not the animal, who merely hosts or realizes it at a given time. This leads naturally on to the next point.

6 A Problem with ‘Animalism’: is not being a Conscious Subject still a ‘Further Fact’? Wiggins’s and Olson’s theories both belong with the general group known as ‘animalism’. This is the view that a human person is, or is a temporal phase of, a human animal. Animalism has the advantage that the concept ‘human being’ (or ‘human animal’) is not crucially concept dependent. There are indeterminacies in that concept – it is contentious whether the conceptus and the corpse are phases of the animal or pre and post the animal, but neither of these manifest active

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‘person’ characteristics, so these uncertainties do not affect the present issue. One can then either identify the person with the human animal or think of a person as something that a human animal is during a (large) part of its existence. So the application of the concept animal is, in the relevant cases, crucially wholly world dependent. The matter is not so straightforward, however, when we raise the issue of the conscious subject. When we ask questions about personal identity, one thing that we are certainly interested in are the conditions for being the same subject of consciousness. Now this will fit in with animalism if the individual animal is the subject of consciousness. But there seems to me to be a problem about what this means, within the constraints of the Accepted Ontology. The conscious subject is not merely a logical subject. He does not possess his conscious states simply in the way that, for example, the ball possesses the properties of being round and red. As was implied in the discussion of the previous objection, the brain might be said to possess thoughts in that sense, but that is not enough to make it or the animal the subject or thinker of the thoughts. The conscious subject enters into the consciousness itself, as apprehending its contents. Apprehending the contents of consciousness is not the same as mere logical ownership. For the psychological criterion, the thinker is a product of the functional organisation: it is the ‘unity of apperception’ that that organisation produces. If the animalist wants to make the animal the genuine subject of consciousness, and not merely its host, there must be something more to the situation than the animal body and certain mental states functionally related to each other. The animal must enter into that functional relationship as the conscious subject who apprehends the contents, where this means more than that they occur in it. This is a very mysterious kind of ‘further fact’ to impute to the animal. An animalist might try either of the following two objections to this argument. (i) The animalist might respond by denying that he ever claimed that the animal was the conscious subject, but only that personal identity resides in the identity of the animal, which is a weaker claim. After all, he

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admits that the animal exists before it is ever a conscious subject or person, and may do so afterwards. My response to this is that there is a big difference between allowing that that in which personal identity resides can fail at certain times to be conscious or even to be a person, and conceding that, even when there is a conscious subject present, that in which identity resides is not itself that subject. This is to make too absolute a divide between identity and subjecthood. If there is an account available which preserves the connection between these, it is to be preferred. (ii) An animalist who is a functionalist can deny force to the distinction I have made between merely housing or possessing the mental events and apprehending them as their subject. For a functionalist, being the subject of the mental events is no more than being the body whose behaviour they govern, so apprehending is only housing with behavioural influence. This argument brings to the fore the interesting fact that the issue of personal identity is largely discussed in abstraction from the more general issue of ‘the mind-body problem’. This may be one of those points where it is not possible to continue to do this. It is true that, in my argument against animalism, I am taking the phenomenology of being a conscious subject in a non-reductive way. I am prepared to assert that functionalism is an inadequate account of consciousness, and proceed from that. Nevertheless, functionalism and animalism do not fit well together. There seems to be no reason why a continuing functional system should not move from body to body. There seems to be, even within the context of this reductive account of consciousness, a tension between the claim of functional unity to constitute subjecthood, and the claim of the body. An animalist who rejects reductive functionalism has, perhaps, one strategy for attributing subjecthood to the body. Whether it is compatible with the Accepted Ontology is a mute point. He can adopt a strengthened version of the neutral monism advocated, following Russell, by Maxwell (1978) and

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Lockwood (1989). They explain the qualitative content of experience (the ‘qualia’) by saying that it is identical with the intrinsic nature of the matter of which the brain is made. Every proton and electron has an intrinsic nature which, if not quite phenomenal (that only emerges with the complexity of the brain) is proto-phenomenal. Now these philosophers tend to stress that this qualitative nature corresponds to the content of consciousness, not to consciousness itself. They hope, by this proviso, to avoid the charge of being pan-psychist. But if one is to make the animal into the apprehending subject of these contents, then the intrinsic nature of matter would have to include protosubjecthood as well as proto-phenomenal content. This would turn the constituents of matter into something very like Leibnizian monads, and this is hardly in the spirit of the Accepted Ontology. Even this, though a necessary condition for animalism if one does not have a reductive account of consciousness, would not be sufficient to show that animalism is the correct account of personal identity. On this ‘neutral monism plus’ theory, the animal subject of consciousness would be a complex object, which could, therefore, be subject to fission or fusion. Furthermore, it does not rule out the transmission of psychological continuity to, or its reproduction in, another animal, and someone who supported the psychological criterion could cite Locke in claiming that continuity of consciousness is more important for identity than sameness of substance: if the right C and C relations are passed on, it does not matter whether it is the same substantial subject. To cap it all, without some argument to show that animalism and the psychological continuity theory are not equal competitors, everything that is said in sections (iii) holds, even if animalism is a coherent position.

7 The Situation so Far I have argued that, on the ontology accepted by all bien pensant philosophers, there is no substantial fact of the matter concerning personal identity beyond psychological and bodily continuity, and that, seen in this light, the psychological criterion is the only one to have any appeal. But this appeal

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rests only on the brute fact that we do, as a matter of fact, care about future mental states in the same stream of consciousness. Mere cognitive connectedness does not constitute concern at all. The sort of memory connectedness, even from a first person perspective, that is allowed by the accepted ontology, does not, of itself, imply any identification of interest or concern. Whether there is such, is a further brute fact. So one can remember or expect things ‘from the first person point of view’ without feeling any concern about the remembered or anticipated subject. To say otherwise, is to say that there must be something about the individual cognitive mental events that forces an affective identification with the point of view of another experience. This seems to me to be equivalent to saying that there is a subject that ‘transcends’ the individual events, because it suggests that there is something about cognitive connectedness which carries with it the idea ‘this matters to me’, and I do not see why this should be so, or even how this could be so, unless the sameness of subject was implicit in cognitive connectedness itself. If this is correct, it follows from the four points in our original Accepted Ontology that (5) Whether one cares or not about some state of affairs is a brute fact, with a naturalistic or causal explanation, but one is under no rational compulsion. Now it seems to me that this picture of the self is incoherent. Whereas ‘discounting the future’ makes sense to some degree, complete indifference to all other moments in the stream of consciousness to which this present experience belongs, does not. It makes sense for a subject to care less about a visit to the dentist that is to take place next year, than one that is to take place tomorrow, but it makes no sense to imagine a subject who is absolutely indifferent to the prospect of the tortures of hell in ten seconds time, on the grounds that that will be a different experience from this one, and, in so far as ‘I’ can be said to exist at all, I am simply the having of this experience. This present person-stage includes the cognition that there is person-stage ten seconds in the future of the same stream (that is, the future stage will include full memory connections to this present person-stage) which will be maximally

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unpleasant, but so what! That is just a different event. This seems to me to be incoherent. I cannot think of myself as a subject and agent now (and I cannot avoid doing that) without identifying myself with the subject or subjects that is or are immediately C-related to me. These arguments against the Parfitian conception of the self need much more development, and are interestingly investigated in Blackburn (1997), but my purpose in alluding to them here is simply to motivate the attempt to construct a non-reductive theory of the self. This will necessarily involve abandoning the Accepted Ontology common to naturalism and simple property dualism and considering the self’s relation to time.

PART II: THE SELF AND TIME

1 The Asymmetry between Synchronic and Diachronic Unity If what I say above is correct, it would be preferable to have a theory of identity through time which rested on something stronger than the C and C relations that Parfit’s theory allows. For ‘bundle theories’ of this kind, unity is only a construction from relations between mental contents. But in the case of synchronic unity this consists in a primitive and unanalysable relation of coconsciousness, whereas, for unity over time it consists in relations of resemblance and causal dependence. The non-reductionist’s ambition is to develop such an understanding of the underlying nature of the synchronic relation that it can be applied to the diachronic case, thereby capturing the latter in the more intimate and primitive bond of the former. The simplest attempt at this is to postulate a ‘Cartesian’ ego, which simply ‘owns’ the mental contents, at a time and through time. Locke, I think, accepted this account for synchronic unity, but denied that it helped with diachronic: whether the right kind of memory relations hold is independent of whether there is the same ‘immaterial

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substratum’, and it is the memory relations that matter for what he calls ‘sameness of consciousness’. A more modest proposal than the Cartesian one is to seek the way forward in the experienced unity of unbroken consciousness. During a period of unbroken consciousness, the contents of the mind seem to overlap with – or, in William James’ phrase, ‘flow into’ – each other temporally, and the centre of consciousness – the unity of apperception – presents itself as the same moving point. Had the contents developed differently, this point of unity would not seem to be different: the self that I seem to be at a given time is not just a function of what is at that moment impinging on my consciousness. Exactly how one should understand this conscious continuity is not clear, but it is only to bridge the gap caused by the ‘catastrophy’ of complete unconsciousness that one is undoubtedly forced to resort to the external relations of causation and resemblance. Nevertheless, this gap is radical, for anyone hoping to apply the model of synchronic consciousness to identity through time. It is by considering the relation of the self to time that one might hope to bridge that gap in a different way.

2 Neutralizing Time The relevance of time to our problem is that the various dislocations in the unity of the self are due to its apparent presence in time. If it were outside time, then Locke’s worry that one immaterial substance might succeed another would lose its grip. Temporal gaps in experience would also cease to be gaps in the existence of the experiencing self. I want to look at the prospects for at least loosening the self’s relation to and dependence on time. The first problem to overcome is the instinct that time – like space, but more so – must be a necessary part of the framework in which (non-abstract) things exist, and that it must be one unitary phenomenon. The feeling is that different things cannot exist in different times, or different kinds of time, or outside time altogether. This instinct is very strong, but it ignores the fact that time and space are just dimensions of the empirical and physical worlds, and

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how those dimensions work depends on how the world works. The conception of time and space as necessary frameworks which are independent of the events that take place in them, though natural, is contradicted by science, which sees them as properties of the physical system itself. The temporality of an object is a function of the nature of the processes that take place in it and in the objects to which it is spatially related, if any: it is not an external imposition. With this thought in mind, I want to slacken the grip of time on our conception of the self. First I shall begin with it relation to the flow of time: that is, to time as it is conceived of in McTaggart’s A-series. In Problems of Philosophy Russell (1912/1959) suggested that physical space could not be thought of as being qualitatively the way it seemed either visually or in touch. (Russell 1912/1959, pp. 29ff) Our knowledge of its physical nature is entirely abstract and formal. This view of space is well known and, though by no means uncontroversial, often accepted. But Russell indicates, if he does not quite say, similar things about time. Why should one not say that duration (‘it took a long time’) and the flowing nature of time are, like the specifically visual and tactile aspects of space, features of the way we experience the world? Physical time, in so far as we know it, is only an abstract structural feature of the physical system as a whole, which reflects the directionality of causal dependence. How does this help? Our problem was ‘how can we think of the unity of the subject as he endures through the changing flow of, and breaks in, experience, as being essentially the same as the unity of the subject at a time?’ The answer is that he does not ‘endure through’ these things, because time as expressed in flows and breaks is only a feature of our experience of the world, not of its real nature, and so not of the nature of the subject that has the experiences. The subject apprehends things as having that time structure without himself being part of it. Just as one would not ask where someone is within their own visual field, neither are they within the kind of time-flow that they experience. They are the standpoint from which these arrays are apprehended. There are various problems that might be raised about this model.

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If we abstract time from any element of flow, does that not give us a ‘block’ view of time, which, among other things, carries a rigid determinism with it? Sometimes, the ‘block’ view of time seems to be stated as if it were an account of time in its entirety. On this way of looking at it, it is just a mistake to think that time flows at all. This view seems to contradict basic facts of experience, for it seems barely coherent to deny the passage from one experiential content to another.* If it were true, it would seem to imply determinism, or, perhaps, fatalism, for it seems to leave no room for activity at all. This would be so, even if there were randomness in the structure. My view is that the ‘scientific image’ of the world is a block view, but the ‘manifest image’, which is a construction from experience, contains flow. Nevertheless, the accusation that it implies determinism is not answered by making this point. If the real physical universe is a block, and frozen in ice, and some of the bodies within it are causally responsible for the flowing conscious life, then the latter is a function of something that is eternally fixed. This is not so. The contents of the block are not fixed ‘prior to’ the existence of the more genuinely temporal experience. The block universe stands as a template for the flow of experience in the manifest world, but, though there is a mapping, there is no temporal relation between them. There is no reason why there should not be features of the block which are as they are because something occurred as it did within the temporal flow. Of course, this breaches the ‘closure of physics’, but so does any form of interactionism. The block universe is not one frozen into its form before experience begins, it is one to which time as experienced as flow does not apply. It is a certain complex structure of events, and what determines those events to be as they are, is a further question. The question that naturally worries philosophers with this picture is ‘what is the temporal relationship between the physical, ‘block’, universe and the flowing time of the manifest and intersubjective universe?’ The answer is that there is no temporal relationship, though there are mappings from one to the other. Once one has rejected the view that there must be one overarching *

For a serious discussion of these issues, see Dainton (2001).

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temporal framework, this initially strange answer becomes possible. The situation is made even more complicated if one takes mental phenomena in a non-reductive way. If one acknowledges the private spaces associated with each individual’s visual and tactile fields, then there is no way of integrating these with the spaces of the manifest or the scientific world. Although such a view of private spaces is not currently fashionable, it is quite familiar. To say the same for each individual’s temporal field, however, strikes people as stranger, but I do not see that this is well-founded. The relation of the self to these temporal systems is at least analogous to the one that traditional theology attributes to God, though without attributing to the self the specifically divine properties of omniscience, omnipotence, eternity or self-subsistence. God is eternal – that is, outside time altogether – because (a) there is no process of change within Him; (b) He stands in no spatial relation to anything that does change. His relations are those of intellect and will. Unlike God, we are cognitively and affectively related to only a small part of the world, namely to or through our own bodies. And, even within that narrow range, the quality of our contact is only distantly analogous to God’s supposed relation. Furthermore, one may not want to attribute a similar changelessness to our selves, putting all change in the experiential world to which we respond. Nevertheless, neither is there any reason to see the processes of change in, and hence the temporality of, the self as mere reflections of the nature of the temporality found in the phenomenal realm. The expression of a thought in a sentence is spread out in the normal ‘flowing’ empirical time. But the thinking of the thought which, in some sense, ‘lies behind’ (but not necessarily temporally before) this, is not temporally structured in the same way. Something which is implicit in the thought is laid out explicitly in the sentence. This distinction is present in normal experience because it is clear that if, in most ordinary cases, the thought was not there ‘already’ before one started to express it, one would never begin to spell it out. (I say ‘in most ordinary cases’ because there are also many instances where one is aware, as one begins to express oneself, that one is not sure where one will end up. This is not the case in straightforward thoughts. There, one starts

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because one ‘knows what one wants to say’ – but not because one has already put it to oneself as a sentence.) The idea that mental content lies implicit in some realm which is prior to explicit expression is the essential idea behind Jung’s distinction between the introvert and extrovert factors. A certain kind of intelligence is concerned with rendering more and more explicit in its forms of articulation the understanding that we think we possess. Another form of intelligence is concerned with hanging on to the wholeness provided by the implicit grasp. Grafting this idea onto the picture of the self that I have presented, the intelligence that hangs onto the wholeness is connected with the self that stands outside the more ordinary temporal processes. The intelligence that drives towards explicitness moves towards the more mechanistic, computational or syntactic modes of understanding. There is no human intelligence without both these poles, and it is in the dialectic between the simple, atemporal self and its articulation in the flow of empirical time that their contribution is worked out. Needless to say, this gives one a very ‘metaphysical’ view of the self. In fact, the tendency of what I say is Neoplatonist. This does not mean that it is wholly remote from empirical considerations – at least, if these are understood in a generous enough sense to include some features of the psychology of C. J. Jung! (See Robinson 1987, esp. pp 129-37, for the connection between the self and analytical psychology.)

3 Conclusion Putting the two parts of this essay together, I would tentatively conclude as follows. If animalism is false, as I argued in Part I, then the self cannot be part of the ‘block’ world, for that is the physical universe. And if psychological continuity cannot constitute the self, as I also suggested, with some argument, in the first Part, then the self cannot be constituted simply from the contents of private spaces and times. So the self, to some degree, transcends all these spaces and times, which is not to deny that it is capable of influencing them.

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Acknowledgements A draft of this paper was presented to the Work in Progress seminar at the philosophy department of Central European University, Budapest. I am grateful for the comments of Lorand Ambrus-Lakatos, Gergely Ambrus, Tim Crane, Katalin Farkas, Ferenc Huoranszky, Gyorgy Markus and Hong Yu Wong. I am also grateful to my graduate student, Andra Lazaroiu, who first drew my attention to the importance of the works of Johnston and Olston.

References Blackburn, S. (1997). Has Kant Refuted Parfit? In Dancy, J. (Ed.) Reading Parfit. Oxford: Blackwell, 180-201. Dainton, B, (2001). Time and Space. Chesham: Acumen. Johnston, M. (1992). Reason and Reductionism. Philosophical Review 101: 589-618. Locke, J. (1690/1894/1959) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Dover Publications. Lockwood, M. (1989). Mind, Brain and the Quantum. Oxford: Blackwell. Maxwell, G. (1978). Rigid Designators and Mind-Brain Identity. In Savage, C. (Ed.) Perception and Cognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 365-403. Olson, E. (2001). Material Coincidence and the Indiscernability Problem. Philosophical Quarterly 51: 337-55. Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, H. (1987). A Dualist Perspective on Psychological Development. In Russell, J. (Ed.). Philosophical Perspectives on Developmental Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell, 119-39.

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Robinson, H. (2003). Dualism. In Stich, S., Warfield, T. (Ed.). (2003). The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Blackwell, 85-101. Russell, B. (1912/1959). The Problems of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Wiggins, D. (2001). Sameness and Substance Renewed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1956-7). Personal Identity and Individuation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57: 229-52. Reproduced in Williams (1973): 1-18. Williams, B., (1973). Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Quantum Monism: Spinozicism Revived? Gershon Kurizki

1 Introduction In the history of Western philosophy, Spinoza’s metaphysics is the last monistic approach, which reduces reality and all its conceptions to a single “substance” (Spinoza 1985). I would like to dwell on three key elements in Spinoza’s metaphysics (Spinoza 1985, Bennett 1984, Curley 1969, Della Rocca 1996, Scruton 1986): (i)

the identification of God or Nature (the World) with the single allencompassing “substance” as opposed to the dichotomy between the transcendental God and the World drawn by the medieval Aristotelians (Averroes and Maimonides) (Honderich 1995, Dronke 1988)

(ii)

the multitude of “modes” of the substance (which include properties, relations, processes, individual objects and subjects)

(iii) the infinity of “attributes”, each expressing the essence of the “substance” from a different perspective. Spinoza draws the following conclusions from these premises: (a) The relationship between the “substance” and its “modes” is that of a subject and its predicates. (b) Mind and body are one, conceived under different attributes.

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(c) The World is deterministic and time is not its attribute, but merely a fleeting mode. (d) Freedom and happiness are achievable by recognizing this determinism and contemplating the World in the light of its eternal ideas, rather than succumbing to the passive tendency (possessed by each object and subject) to preserve the individual existence (“conatus”). Spinoza’s metaphysics has long been held to be hopelessly archaic, essentially medieval. Yet, in the aftermath of the many conflicting approaches to the basic problems of philosophy in the past two centuries, the certitude and conceptual simplicity of Spinoza’s monism are rather enviable. Would it be possible to revive this old metaphysics by expressing it in terms more palatable to the contemporary mind? It is the purpose of this short article to examine such a possibility, by outlining the reformulation of Spinozicism in terms borrowed from the apparatus of quantum mechanics (Jammer 1974). This reformulation endeavours to extend the quantum-mechanical description of the physical world to the domains of ontology, epistemology and the psychophysical problem. This attempt is inspired by the geometrical method used in Spinoza’s “Ethics” [Spinoza 1985, Bennett 1984): the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics allows us to draw parallels between its notions and those expounded in the “Ethics”.

2 Quantum Mechanics – A Glossary Quantum mechanics (QM) can be formulated either in terms of quantum states describing physical systems, or in terms of “observables” pertaining to measurable quantities in such systems (Jammer 1974, Hughes 1989, Davydov 1965, Jancel 1963). The following notions of QM are here most pertinent:

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1) Superpositions and equivalent representations: An isolated system can coexist in a superposition of mutually exclusive states, termed “eigenstates”. Each eigenstate corresponds to predictable measurement outcomes for certain observables. On the other hand, the entire superposition only has “potentialities” to yield particular measurement outcomes (“actualities”) for the same observables, so that these observables are uncertain. It is highly relevant for our purpose that there is an infinite number of alternative sets of eigenstates (“bases”), providing an infinity of equivalent representations of the system’s state, so that an eigenstate in one basis is a superposition in another. 2) Quantum entanglement: This is the inability to ascribe independent states to subsystems that form an inseparable, “entangled” (or correlated), state. The notion of entanglement was referred to by Schrödinger (Schrödinger 1935) as the most enigmatic feature of QM. It had been first discussed by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) (1935), as follows. By measuring an observable on one of the entangled subsystems, we single out a counterpart observable on the other subsystem, such that the two observables are correlated: given a measurement outcome for one of them, we can perfectly predict the corresponding outcome for its counterpart, although each observable is uncertain separately. For example, depending on whether the position or the momentum of one of two entangled particles is measured, either the position or the momentum of the other particle is predictable. The EPR had been puzzled by the persistence of correlations between entangled subsystems that are arbitrarily far apart without any causal rapport. 3) Projections: These are measurements that verify whether a subsystem of the entire composite system is in a particular state. Projections irreversibly change the evolution of the subsystem, which is otherwise symmetric with respect to the past and the future. Equivalently, the evolution of the entire (composite) system is temporally deterministic in the absence of projections, as it is governed by the Schrödinger equation (or the Dirac equation, in the case of relativistic systems).

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4) State robustness and decoherence: The interaction between subsystems tends to destroy (decohere) the state of an individual (isolated) subsystem, unless it is “robust” under such interaction. If the basis of one subsystem has larger dimensionality than its counterparts (i.e., it exists in a larger Hilbert space), it is commonly viewed as the “environment” of the smaller-dimensional subsystems that interact with it. A measurement on a subsystem requires it to become entangled with a special environment, a measuring apparatus, this being a prerequisite for the projection that verifies the subsystem’s state.

3 Principles of Monistic Quantum Spinozicism I shall now expound the principles of the proposed monistic quantum Spinozicism (MQS), drawing its parallels with the aforementioned QM notions: a) Spinoza’s ideas as quantum states: The logical relation of an idea to its object (ideatum) will be postulated to be that of a quantum state to the system it describes. The notion of superpositions of eigenstates will be paralleled to that of Spinoza’s “modes” of existence. Subsystem states (the entire system being the World) will be paralleled to finite “modes”, whereas eigenstates or observables of the World will be its attributes. b) Complexity versus unity of Nature/God: The unity and uniqueness of Spinoza’s substance (“Deus sive Natura”), which is counterposed to the infinity of its “modes”, will be held analogous to the uniqueness of the quantum state of the World and the infinity of its equivalent representations, respectively. c) Entanglement of physical and mental realities: This notion will be taken to imply that a complete set of states for the World (“Natura”) cannot be separated into exclusively physical or mental (psychic) states. Namely,

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physical and mental states are correlated (but not causally related!). This idea stands in sharp contrast to von Neumann’s or Wigner’s dualism (Jammer 1974, Jancel 1963) whereby the “potentialities” stored in a quantum state of an object are in the observer’s mind, and it is the observer’s choice which “potentialities” will become “actualities”, by choosing the basis for measurements. In MQS, our minds are entangled with the measured objects, all being parts of the World wave function. d) Freedom and happiness: These key notions of Spinoza’s “Ethics” will be described as outcomes of the ability of our consciousness to transgress the boundaries of its individual subsystem (“subspace”) and be embedded in the largest possible “space”, thus expanding our conscious rapport with the World and its eternal truths. e) Causality, necessity and chance: Individuation and chance occurrences in either the human sphere or in the physical world do not contradict Spinoza’s determinism and uniqueness of the substance. In MQS, these notions will be construed as resulting from projections of the complete psychophysical state of the World onto either mental or physical “bases” pertaining to distinct subsystems. These projections are unavoidable consequences of the interaction (coupling) of individual subjects or objects with their environment. In the mental world, the “environment” may be associated with the non-individual (archetypal, in Jung’s parlance) part of our mind, which may be mutually exclusive (orthogonal) with the individual part.

4 Conclusions This short essay has outlined my proposal to reformulate Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics, including its psychophysical and ethical derivatives, using the terminology of quantum mechanics. In the framework of this proposal, I find particularly striking the analogies between Spinoza’s explanations of individuation and chance and the proposed entangled-state projections onto a

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physical or mental subspace. Another intriguing analogy is between the infinity of unitarily equivalent bases and Spinoza’s infinity of “modes”. These analogies may prove fruitful in the desirable attempt to revive the long-severed connection between scientific conceptions of the World and those of “deistic” metaphysics, which was heroically upheld by Baruch Spinoza.

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Mathematical Appendix The foregoing principles of MQS may be mathematically expressed in the spirit of Spinoza’s “Ethics” (Spinoza 1985, Bennett 1984, Curley 1969) as follows: a) The “state of the World” may be represented in any of an infinite number of equivalent bases

~

ψ >= ∑ c i | i >= ∑ c j | j > i

(1)

j

where { i〉 } and {|j>} are complete (orthonormal) sets of eigenstates that are unitarily related to each other. b) The eigenstates |j> may be decomposed into superpositions of entangled mental (|m>) and physical (|p>) states: ( j) | j >= ∑ ∑ amp | m >| p > . m

(2)

p

c) An eigenstate |j> belonging to the complete set of the World eigenstates may be projected onto a superposition (“wavepacket”) of |m> states ∧

representing a human individuum via a projector P ind . Such projections express the coupling of an individuum to its mental and physical environments. ∧

They result in the individuum being governed by a statistical “mixture” P ind , which is a reduced density matrix obtained from Eq. (2) as follows [8,9]:

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ρ

( j) ind

∧

= Pind j〉〈 j = ∑b*m' bm" ∑ a*(m' jp)a(mj")p ρ pp m ' m"

p

.

(3) ∧

Here the coefficients {bm } are determined by the projector P ind . This projector is, in part, an act of consciousness: it is controllable by the selfawareness of the coupling to the external, mental and physical environments. ( j) Namely, my knowledge of ρ ind in Eq. (3), helps me recognize the coefficients ( {ampj )} imposed upon me by these environments. This recognition helps me resign myself to my lot in life.

Acknowledgements Valuable suggestions are acknowledged from A. Elitzur and S. Stenholm.

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References Bennett, J. (1984). A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Curley, E.M. (1969). Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. Cambridge, (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Della Rocca, M. (1996). Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davydov, A.S. (1965). Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Dronke, P. (Ed.) (1988). A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Einstein, A.; Podolsky, B.and Rosen, N. (1935). Phys.Rev. 47, 777. Honderich, T. (Ed.) (1995). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford: University Press. Hughes, R. (1989). The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge, (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Jammer, M. (1974). The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. New York: Wiley. Jancel, R. (1963). Foundations of Classical and Quantum Statistical Mechanics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Schrödinger, E. (1935). Naturwissenschaften 48, 807; ibid 49, 823; ibid 50, 844. Scruton, R. (1986). Spinoza. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spinoza, Baruch (1985). The Collected Works of Spinoza. Ed. and trans. Edwin Curley Vol. I. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Boundary Conditions for Theories of Consciousness: The Near-Death Experience and the Failure of Materialism J. Kenneth Arnette

1 Introduction What is consciousness, and whence comes our preoccupation with it? Why are we inexorably drawn to this topic, and why does no solution appear to be forthcoming? The recent explosion in the number of relevant articles and books (e.g., Freeman 2003; Gray 2004; Lloyd 2004; Robinson 2004; and Rowlands 2001) testifies to the fact that interest in understanding consciousness is stronger than ever. Yet even those who claim to have explained consciousness (e.g., Dennett 1991) hint, in the final analysis, that they have fallen short of that goal (Güzeldere 1995). Similarly, Humphrey (2000) claims to know how to solve a highly related problem, that of the relationship between mind and body (Lind 2001), but inexplicably does not go on to solve said problem. These last two examples suggest disarray in consciousness research. In fact, the situation is worse than these examples imply (Whitehead 2004). Discussions continue regarding such basic concepts as the very meaning of the word “consciousness” and what kinds of it might exist (Antony 2002); what neurological phenomena might be signatures or correlates of consciousness (Baars 2003; Bauer 2004; Dietrich 2003; Fell 2004; Osaka 2003); whether consciousness can be explained by reducing it to the organic functioning of the brain (Beckermann 2000; Carruthers 2004; Horst 1999; Wright 2000); and whether mammals other than humans can have consciousness (Seth, Baars &

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Edelman 2005). And even as some attempt to solve the mind-body problem (Humphrey 2000; Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts 2001), others claim that this topic is unimportant or even irrelevant to the nature of consciousness (Claxton 2003; Ross 2005). The present author holds the exact opposite of the views of Claxton (2003) and Ross (2005): consciousness cannot be understood without first solving the mind-body problem. For example, if a materialist model is shown to solve the mind-body problem, then we know that consciousness is organically produced and we need not pursue more complex or esoteric approaches. If, on the other hand, materialist theories were shown to be inadequate to the mind-body problem, we could immediately move on to alternative strategies. While a solution might not answer all questions regarding consciousness, it would certainly rule out many theories and point the way for further research. In addition to this point, it is the thesis of the present work that there are two simple reasons for the intransigence of the problem of consciousness: the problem has been severely miscast, so that solutions have been sought where none exist; simultaneously, data bearing directly on the nature of consciousness have been ignored. The path to these conclusions begins with a brief discussion of just what the problem of consciousness entails, according to some contemporary researchers in the field. Following this, a simple mathematical framework (yielding crucial boundary conditions) places the issue within a context that facilitates the subsequent analysis. Some examples of materialistic models of consciousness then provide a starting point for an exposition of the shortcomings of materialism generally, using data from the near-death experience (NDE). Any and all materialist explanations of these data are shown to be inadequate. Thus, the empirical data are inconsistent with boundary conditions required by one-dimensional (materialistic) models.

2 The Problem(s) of Consciousness Güven Güzeldere (1995) gave a useful overview of consciousness research. Güzeldere stated that the problem of consciousness differs funda-

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mentally from other scientific problems in that it necessarily involves firstperson experience, rather than being amenable to third-person inquiry alone. This difference may also be characterized as subjectivist vs. objectivist or phenomenological vs. physicalist. There is a stark contrast between these two alternatives, subjectivity being studiously avoided by the scientific (materialist) paradigm. Thus, the basic conundrum is: “(c)an one accommodate a respectable account of consciousness that does justice to the richness of our conscious experiences...within a framework based on a monistic materialist ontology?“ (Güzeldere 1995, p. 116). Güzeldere held that the problem of consciousness actually consists of several problems, and categorized these as follows: (1) what media can possess consciousness, and what is the mechanism thereof; (2) where is consciousness located in the body/brain; (3) who (which species) can be regarded as conscious; (4) why is there consciousness, and what role does it play; and (5) how is consciousness produced from its substrate and mechanism. Güzeldere (1995) pointed out that Problem 5 is actually the subjectivity question (“how does any physical mechanism give rise to any phenomenal experience“ [Güzeldere 1995, p. 126, emphasis in text]), and as such bears a distinct resemblance to what David Chalmers (1995, 1996a, 1996b, 2003) has defined as the hard problem of consciousness. Chalmers (1995) divided the problems of consciousness into two categories. The “easy“ problems he saw as those susceptible to familiar cognitive scientific methods, solvable in the long term by empirical inquiry coupled with neurocognitive theories. These problems could include: sensation and perception of and reaction to environmental stimuli; cognitive integration of information; accessing and reporting of internal states; attention; control of behavior; and others. Presumably, many or all of Güzeldere's (1995) Problems 1 through 4 above would fall into the “easy“ category. The solutions to none of these problems would, however, solve the “hard“ problem (Chalmers 1995, p. 201, emphasis in text): “(i)t is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should,

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and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one.“ Chalmers (1995, p. 203) went on to say that an explanation of functions related to experience would not explain why the performance of those functions is accompanied by experience: “(w)hy doesn't all this informationprocessing go on 'in the dark', free of any inner feel?“ In the end, Chalmers (1995, p. 207) maintained, this problem demonstrates a need to add an “extra ingredient“ to those of the physical world (matter, energy, space, and time) so that experience is nonreductively included as fundamental in the structure and functioning of the world, both objective and subjective. He argued that this expansion of basic features of the universe is not new to physics, and occurs when empirical data force such additions. Thus the portrayal of experience as irreducible, in Chalmers' view, adds on to (rather than supersedes) physical laws and allows for the eventual bridging of the subjective and objective. He characterized his position as “naturalistic dualism“ (Chalmers 1995, p. 210). Chalmers' point of view has, of course, generated disagreements in many quarters. The reactions have been far too numerous to summarize here, but three examples will demonstrate the range of responses. Douglas Bilodeau (1996, p. 397) held that Chalmers misjudged the degree to which science, and especially modern physics, can “dispel the tyranny of mechanical and geometrical models over the imagination. Once we are freed from these prejudices, the hard problem dissolves. It does not disappear, but is now manifested as a collection of smaller problems which we may hope to answer.“ That is, the hard problem arises from a basic misconception about the physical world: that it is necessarily mechanistic and unconscious. Kieron O'Hara and Tom Scutt (1996, p. 291) took the position that the hard problem is “not a serious problem“ because not even an idea about how to solve it currently exists. Therefore, we are justified in ignoring it for now and instead tackling the easier problems, for which solutions are possible. Moving in the opposite direction, Piet Hut and Roger Shepard (1996, p. 317) turned the hard problem “upside down“ by stating that subjective experience is unassailable, and “(t)hus the biggest mystery is no longer consciousness but

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the objective physical world, which is never directly experienced but is only inferred on the basis of order and correlations within subjective experience.“ The present author disagrees strongly with O'Hara and Scutt and with Bilodeau (for reasons that will become apparent below), and finds large areas of agreement with Chalmers and with Hut and Shepard. Many of these latter authors' arguments are persuasive; they are, however, merely that: arguments. Arguments always generate counter-arguments, and the circle continues, unbroken. But arguments combined with empirical data have a chance to move the debate past its present cycle and into more productive territory. What, then, constitutes relevant data in this context? Given that consciousness is the topic, it seems only proper that the data most likely to aid in the debate are the data of subjective experience, even though this is apparently contrary to the objectivist, third-person nature of scientific inquiry (Güzeldere 1995). Further, if these data are applied within the proper framework, and if they focus on a critical question posed by that framework, then they have the potential to falsify an entire class of theory and lend support to a very different kind of explanation. One need not, however, give up entirely on objectivity: the data of subjective experience may reasonably be constrained by intersubjectivity (Hut & Shepard 1996; Jack & Roepstorff 2003; Piccinini 2003; Thompson 2001; Zahavi 2001), which expresses “properties that are inherent in subjective conscious experience, but in addition are mutually agreed upon by different subjects“ (Hut & Shepard 1996, p. 317). With this constraint, subjectivity is harnessed in the quest for intersubjective truth. The present article works from the premise that the hard problem of consciousness arises from a flawed assumption, to wit: consciousness results from the action of matter and energy alone, without which consciousness would not exist. Instead, it is herein proposed that we cannot explain how subjectivity is produced by matter, because it isn't. Subjective experience deserves an ontological status at least on a par with matter-energy and spacetime. In addition, certain intersubjective empirical data clearly support this apparently radical view. From the present perspective, the hard problem and

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many of the “easy“ problems are artefacts of an inappropriate choice of coordinate system. 2.1 Coordinates of Consciousness In physical science, a coordinate system is a geometric framework chosen to give context to a physical system and allow a mathematical description. The Cartesian coordinate system, for example, consists of three perpendicular (orthogonal) axes, each representing a dimension of space. This is the perfect context for describing a line, plane, rectangle, or cube. Problems in physics are highly dependent on the choice of coordinate system to facilitate the problems' solutions. The choice of coordinates is typically dictated by the symmetry of the physical system (Arfken 1970). For example, the solution for and description of the electric field around a straight wire is much simpler if one chooses cylindrical coordinates rather than, say, Cartesian coordinates (Lorrain & Corson 1970). An even more egregious error than violating a system's symmetry is violating its dimensionality. If for example one chooses a two-dimensional coordinate system to describe a three-dimensional physical system, the result will (at best) describe only a limited aspect of the physical system. One runs the risk of obtaining a solution that is irrelevant to the true problem. The development below will show that materialist approaches to the problems of consciousness commit this dimensionality error. Thus the suggestions of O'Hara and Scutt (1996) are counter-productive, since any presently available solutions to the “easy“ problems of consciousness would be based on an inadequate coordinate system, materialism. The choice of coordinates must come first, before any problems are solved (Arfken 1970). In the present context, “coordinate system“ does not refer to the spatial or physical description of the problem but rather to a more generalized concept. Consider at the outset that one dimension of the problem may correspond to the complete set of material or physical parameters: matter-energy, space-time, and all things constructed therefrom. To the material dimension

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one may add Chalmers' (1995) “extra ingredient,“ subjective experience, as a second, independent dimension. To facilitate the development of this idea, consider the general case that consciousness may be a vector, that is, an entity that requires the specification of two quantities (such as direction and magnitude) for its definition (Arfken 1970). In contrast, a scalar is a pure number, representing magnitude only. A vector may be mathematically described by a coordinate system of (at least) two independent dimensions; in the present case, the two dimensions are the material and experiential dimensions. Figure 1 is a representation of consciousness as a vector.

axis w

E(wi, bi, t) (magnitude)

C(wi, bi, t) (consciousness) e (unit vector)

m

(unit vector) axis b

M(wi, bi, t) (magnitude)

Figure 1 Representation of consciousness as a vector, resolvable into components along the material (m) and experiential (e) dimensions with scalar magnitudes M and E, respectively.

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The consciousness vector C(bi,wi,t), in the most general case, is a function of: (1) a set of variables (bi) that represent all of the physical and biological factors influencing consciousness, for example: heart and respiration rates; blood oxygen, glucose, and carbon dioxide levels; chronological or developmental age; and degree of brain injury; (2) a set of variables (wi) denoting potential non-biological factors, for example: will, intuition, attention, introspection, and judgement; and (3) time (t). In addition, any of the bi and wi may be explicit or implicit functions of time, or time-independent. As shown in Figure 1, C may be resolved into components in or projections onto the material and experiential dimensions. Each of these dimensions is characterized by a unit vector (Arfken 1970), denoted by m (material) or e (experiential), that lies purely in the “direction“ of its respective dimension and has a “magnitude“ of one. Thus C can be expressed as a linear combination of these unit vectors, each with a scalar magnitude, as shown by Equation 1:

C(bi , w i , t) = M(bi , w i , t)m + E(bi , w i , t)e

(1)

Again taking the most general case, each scalar magnitude may be a function of both the bi and the wi, thereby allowing for the possibility of interaction between the two dimensions. Materialist theories, within the present formalism, are defined as those holding that the wi do not exist; that is, all variables are biological and physical ones (bi). Thus, while materialism may allow experience to exist, it is seen as a product of biological variables alone. In the final materialist analysis, the dimension e does not exist separately from the material dimension m. Then there exists only one dimension and the vector C is reduced to a scalar quantity. To illustrate this point, some examples of materialist theories are briefly discussed below.

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2.2 Some Examples of One-Dimensional Models There are a variety of positions that may be labelled materialist, each of which deserves some explication. Four major viewpoints are discussed below. Some specific objections to these positions will then be briefly stated, and common features of all materialist theories will be pointed out. Note that this discussion is not intended to be comprehensive; indeed, a full review of materialist positions is, as will be seen, unnecessary for the present purpose. First, epiphenomenalism, popularised by Thomas Huxley in the late nineteenth century (Cornman 1981), proposes that the mind is entirely the product of the brain, and is in no way causal (Cornman 1981; Taylor 1992). Mental (experiential) states are affirmed to exist and are recognized to be qualitatively different from the physical states of the brain. Epiphenomenalism is thus a property dualism, as opposed to a substance dualism; matter is hypothesized to give rise to both the mental and physical states. Further, the brain causes the mind to exist, but the mental states cannot be reduced to the physical states. Finally, mental states cannot influence physical states or other mental states: mental states cannot be causal in any sense. Consequently, mental states are completely irrelevant to behavior and are merely by-products of brain functioning. Second, interactionist property dualism is the perspective that mental states arise from physical states but do interact with and influence physical states. Mental states are produced by and yet are distinct from physical states, and, once produced, can cause changes in physical states or in other mental states. One version of this class of theory (Libet 1994) proposes the existence of a “conscious mental field” (CMF) that is generated by the brain and is distinct from physical fields such as electromagnetic or gravitational fields. The CMF is responsible for our subjective experience of consciousness, is not directly measurable by physical means, and can be known only to the individual. Furthermore, the CMF has no role in cognitive functions, learning and memory, attention and concentration, or affective states, but only in the conscious experience associated with these phenomena, yet acts causally on neuronal function.

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Third, identity theory, in forms such as central-state (Fodor 1981) or neutral (Cornman 1981) identity theory, holds that mental states are identical to neurophysiological states of the brain. Mental states have the psychological properties we normally attribute to them, while also having the physical properties associated with the corresponding physical states of the brain. Thus, mental states have all the causal properties and power of physical states due to the identity of these states. Consequently, there is no problem of mentalphysical interaction. Identity theory is non-reductive in that it acknowledges the existence of psychological properties and grants causal power to psychological states. This theory proposes that psychological properties are emergent properties, arising from matter only when such matter exists in a sufficiently complex form, such as a human brain (Cornman 1981). Fourth, functionalism (Fodor 1981) holds that mental properties are so different from their underlying physical substrata that psychological properties should be abstracted from any specific physical structure and viewed instead as, for example, part of a causal chain connecting stimulus and response or as an information-processing system. Thus, the conception of the mindbody relationship should not rely on identity with neurophysiological states. Instead, a variety of physical (or non-physical) systems may in principle exhibit the psychological properties that we consider to be uniquely human. Mental states are defined in terms of their causal relationships with other mental states, and have all the causal properties required by psychological explanations of behavior. Therefore, functionalism need not be a materialistic theory, but the vast majority of functionalists are materialists (Fodor 1981; Dennett 1991). This review of four major types of materialist theory shows some of the ways in which materialists have tried to deal with the existence of consciousness and subjectivity while avoiding substance dualism. Each alternative, however, has problems of its own. Epiphenomenalism strongly contradicts the data of our daily subjective experience: psychological states appear to have a direct impact on our behavior and indeed seem to be absolutely required for many of our activities. Libet's interactionist property dualism proposes an entirely new property of matter (the CMF) but gives no indication of

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how matter generates the CMF, what kinds of matter can generate a CMF, or a mechanism for the influence of the CMF on neuronal functioning. Identity theory does not provide the theoretical connection between the complexity of matter and the emergence of experience or consciousness, nor does it address the relational character of mental properties (Fodor 1981). Functionalism disregards the content of mental states (Fodor 1981): two mental states could conceivably differ in their content but serve the same causal roles, thus making the content of our mental states irrelevant to our mental life and, consequently, to our behavior. Thus, as mentioned previously, argument leads to counter-argument and in the end scant progress is made in the explaining and understanding of consciousness. But this process can be redirected by considering certain classes of data. James Cornman (1981) pointed out that neutral identity theory requires the end of consciousness with the end of physical life. Indeed, any materialist theory must make the same requirement. Cornman (1981) stated that, due to this requirement, scientifically demonstrated communication from a dead person would constitute a grave problem for identity theory. This, again, is true for any materialist theory. In fact, any confirmed evidence of the survival of death would be incompatible with all materialist theories. Any evidence of survival would supply a case against materialism. This idea is the genesis of boundary conditions in the present mathematical model. 2.3 Boundary Conditions for One-Dimensional Models In the mathematics of differential equations, problems often include boundary conditions (Ritger & Rose 1968): constraints that require the equation's solution to have a certain value(s) at certain point(s), usually at the edge or boundary of the variable space relevant to the problem. These conditions often guarantee a unique solution to the problem, and in applied problems can help insure that the solution is physically reasonable and meaningful (Lorrain & Corson 1970). The materialist requirement that consciousness end at the time of physical death of the body may be seen as a boundary condition (BC) on the con-

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sciousness vector C (see Equation 1). This is evident from Figure 1. The e axis is a boundary of the problem space, and corresponds to the condition M(bi,wi,t) = 0, that is, physical death. Materialism requires that this condition necessarily result in the termination of consciousness, C(bi,wi,t) = 0. Thus, materialism requires that for any time (t*) greater than or equal to the time of death (tD):

C( bi , w i , t*) = 0 = M(bi , w i , t*) = E(bi , w i , t*), t* ≥ t D (2) Stated in words, there can be no consciousness and no experience along the e-boundary of the problem space. This is just a mathematical restatement of the materialist tenet that consciousness is a scalar. Equation 2 therefore generates at least three specific boundary conditions that must be consistent with the empirical data of subjective experience if materialist theories are capable of solving the problem of consciousness: BC1: An individual's subjective experience is terminated at the time of death of the physical body; BC2: Living individuals cannot perceive the presence, in any form, of a deceased person (excluding hallucinations); BC3: An individual cannot obtain knowledge or experience before he or she is conceived. Now the problem is cast in a manner that lends itself to empirical verification or falsification. Data bearing on BC1 (near-death experiences), BC2 (after-death communications) and BC3 (reincarnation) can guide us in determining whether a change of coordinate system is necessary. If one or more of these boundary conditions are not consistent with the empirical data, we are then justified in seeking solutions outside the boundaries of materialism. The present work will address the first of these conditions. The last two will be examined in subsequent papers.

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3 Subjective Data of Consciousness: The Near-Death Experience The near-death experience (NDE) was known to the ancients in many cultures. For example, it was described by Plato (1945) in the Republic, discussed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz 1960), and was known to the ancient Egyptians (Ring 1980, 1984). Yet, the phenomenon was not systematically studied until very recent times. Consider the following account of an NDE by an anthropologist who nearly died in an automobile accident (Ring 1984, p. 39-40): ...It seemed to be sequential in nature, more or less, I say more or less because time itself seems to have disappeared during this period. But the first thing I noticed was that I was dead....[Could you see your body?] Oh, yes, quite clearly. I was floating in the air above the body...and viewing it down sort of a diagonal angle....Then, after that, I realized that I was able to float quite easily, even though I had no intention of doing that....Then I very quickly discovered also that not only was I floating and hence free from gravity but free also from any of the other constrictions that inhibit flight....Then I noticed that there was a dark area ahead of me and as I approached it, I thought that it was some sort of tunnel and immediately, without further thought, I entered into it and then flew with an even greater sensation of the joy of flight....After what I now would imagine to be a relatively short period of time–although again time was dispensed with–I noticed a sort of circular light at a great distance which I assumed to be the end of the tunnel as I was roaring through it....And then I went through the tunnel and seemed to be in a different state. I was in different surroundings where everything seemed to be similarly illuminated by that same light and, uh, I saw other things in it, too...a number of people....I saw my father there, who had been dead for some twenty-five years....I also felt and saw of course that everyone was in a state of absolute compassion to everything else....It seemed too that love was the major axiom that everyone automatically followed....Later I did feel, because of my children and the woman I was married to then, the urge to return...but I don't recall the trip back....[Did it seem like a dream?] No, it seemed nothing like a dream....It really is a strange sensation to be in, but it does give you a feeling that you are in a kind of eternity. (Case 1)

This near-death experiencer (or “NDEr,“ as Kenneth Ring has dubbed the providers of such reports) believed that these events occurred following

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the (temporary) death of his body. What is one to make of such a claim? As an isolated testimony, it is easily dismissed as hallucination, fabrication, psychosis, brain injury, or wishful thinking. But in the company of similar accounts, it would be much more difficult to ignore and would gain intersubjective validity. Raymond Moody (1975, 1977), a physician and philosopher, was the first to investigate, compile and publish cases of the NDE. The impetus for his research was the strong similarity of features among various reports of the NDE that he had encountered. Moody found that the NDE is undergone by a considerable number of people who are threatened with or undergo physical death, but survive or are revived. He assembled a sample of 150 cases and performed a content analysis (Holsti 1969) on these qualitative (narrative) data, thereby identifying the content categories that are now generally agreed to constitute the NDE. A summary of these categories, or NDE phenomena, is given in Table 1. One can see that many of these elements are evident in Case 1 above. Moody noted that while no two accounts of the NDE were identical, many were extremely similar; and that while no one NDEr reported all the phenomena, many NDErs reported more than half of them. He also found that no one element occurs in every account, but that a few elements are almost universal. Each of his reported elements occurred in many different accounts, but the order of occurrence of the phenomena was somewhat variable. Moody's work was ground-breaking, but lacked the necessary methodology to be considered a rigorous scientific study. Kenneth Ring (1980, 1984; Ring & Cooper 1999), a psychologist who was inspired by Moody's work, recognized both its scientific shortcomings and its potential value. He therefore developed an approach that insured greater scientific validity than did Moody’s. In Ring's (1980) methodology, the interviewer initially asked simply for the patient's experiences during the near-death episode, and avoided suggestive or leading questions that might result in fabrications or embellishments. If the patient reported an NDE, more specific questions were asked later in the interview. Also, extensive demographic information was collected for each participant.

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Phenomenon Ineffability

Description Inability to adequately describe one's experiences in ordinary language Hearing the news Hearing pronouncement of one's own death Feelings of peace and Cessation of pain and worry, replaced by calm quiet and happiness The noise Apparent auditory sensing of a buzzing, ringing, whistling, or other sounds The dark tunnel Rapid movement through dark cylinder Out of the body Apparent separation from one's body and observation of events from outside it Meeting others Interactions with non-material beings via thought reception/transmission The being of light Encountering a bright light associated with an allloving personality The review Vivid re-experiencing of entire life The border or limit Symbolic limit of the experience Coming back Sense of need to complete a life task; return to body without memory of trip Table 1 Raymond Moody's original classification of NDE phenomena

Ring and coworkers were eventually able to compile a sample of 102 cases in the manner described above. From this textual interview data, Ring (1980) extracted the elements of each respondent's experience, and statistically analysed the results. His analysis verified the generality of the phenomena that Moody had found: each of Moody's phenomena appeared many times in Ring's sample. But because Ring was more methodical and quantitative than Moody had been, Ring was able to organize the data to a much greater degree.

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Ring (1980) proposed a model of the NDE that included five stages, representing increasing depth of the experience. The stage model is summarized and compared to Moody's categories in Table 2. As can be seen from this table, the percentage of Ring's sample of NDErs experiencing each stage decreased as the depth of the experience increased. Also, Ring noted that a phenomenon that he called “the decision to return,“ including Moody's categories of the review, meeting others (deceased loved ones, or “a presence“), and coming back, cut across all stages and were especially prevalent in the latter ones. Thus, the stage model and decision phenomenon accounted for a large portion of the variability that Moody (1975) found in NDE accounts. Ring's quantitative approach and statistical analyses also provided answers to questions concerning the potential effects of some important variables. Ring first assessed whether the NDE was influenced by the way in which one almost dies (illness, accident, or suicide attempt). He found that at least some categories were present under all three conditions, but that incidence and depth of the NDE were greatest in cases of illness and least in cases of attempted suicide. In searching for correlates between the NDE and personal characteristics, Ring found that the likelihood and depth of the NDE were not significantly related to demographic measures (social class, race, marital status, and age), religious affiliation, religiousness, or prior knowledge of the NDE. Ring concluded that the NDE is “a remarkably robust phenomenon, cutting across a variety of situational, individual, and demographic factors“ (Ring 1980, p. 137). Michael Sabom (1982, 1998), a cardiologist, read Moody's work and was sceptical of Moody's dualistic interpretation of the data. Consequently, Sabom (1982) conducted a medical investigation of the NDE at two hospitals. He eventually assembled a sample consisting of 116 cases. The interview method used was similar to Ring's methodology and the same types of data were collected. Sabom's analysis of the data confirmed the generality of Moody's NDE phenomena, as listed in Table 1. Sabom classified NDEs as autoscopic (viewing one's own body), transcendental (entering a different reality), and composite (autoscopic and transcendental elements). The auto-

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scopic NDE is equivalent to Ring's Stages 1 and 2; the transcendental NDE corresponds to Stages 3, 4, and 5.

Stage

Name

Description

1

Affective

2

Body separation Entering darkness Seeing the light

Sense of peace, calm, well-being Feeling of bodily detachment Floating through a dark space Perception of and attraction to a brilliant golden light Entering into a bright, beautiful, unfamiliar world

3 4

5

Entering the light

Associated Moody Categories Feelings of peace and quiet Out of the body

% of sample 60

The dark tunnel

23

Meeting others; the being of light; the review The being of light; the review; the border; Coming back

16

37

10

Table 2 Ring's five stages of the near-death experience

Sabom made at least three major contributions to NDE research. First, he confirmed the basic features as categorized by Moody and verified by Ring. Similarly to Ring, Sabom found no statistically significant correlations for NDE occurrence or content with age, gender, race, area of residence, size of home community, years of education, occupation, religious background, frequency of church attendance, prior knowledge of the NDE, or type of neardeath crisis event (cardiac arrest, coma, or accident). Sabom's second contribution was to compare the features of the NDE with those of known medical syndromes or psychological experiences that had been proposed as explanations of the NDE. He found that phenomena such as autoscopic hallucinations, reactions to anesthetics and other drugs,

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temporal lobe seizures, brain hypoxia (low blood oxygen levels) and hypercarbia (high blood carbon dioxide levels), depersonalisation, and the effects of endorphins each had major differences in phenomenology with the NDE. In this manner, Sabom (1982) showed that no materialistic model proposed at the time accounted for the phenomenal features of the NDE. Perhaps most important was the third contribution of Sabom's work: investigation of operating room (OR) NDEs, which provide a sort of empirical test of the objective nature of the NDE. Since the patient is unconscious before or shortly after being brought into the OR, and is typically unfamiliar with the personnel, equipment, or specific procedures used during surgery, a patient's recollection of these OR facets would be evidence of perception at a time when the patient was supposed to be dead or at least quite unconscious, and definitely unable to see. Sabom identified 32 cases of autoscopic NDEs occurring in operating rooms, and accessed the medical records for these cases. Comparing the NDE interview data with these records (which the patients had never seen), Sabom (1982) found that in every case, the NDEr's report was accurate with regard to the medical records, equipment, and procedures. As an example of Sabom's results, consider the following account of the NDE of a retired mechanic who suffered a heart attack with cardiac arrest (Sabom 1982, p. 105-106): When they got me to the hospital they took me in there and done pulled my clothes off me and put me upon the table. That's when I really had the heart attack....Then all of a sudden it seemed like I moved up. I got up. The room seemed like it was in a glow. I don't know where the light was coming from. I was looking down and they were working on me. Just like getting up out of the bed, just about. I was above myself looking down. They was working on me trying to bring me back. 'Cause I didn't realize it at first that it was my body. I didn't think I was dead. It was an unusual feeling. I could see them working on me and then I realized it was me they were working on. I felt no pain whatsoever and it was a most peaceful feeling. Death is nothing to be afraid of. I didn't feel nothing. They gave me a shot in the groin. Dr. B came up and decided to put one in my left–well, not in my armpit, but on my side. Then he changed his mind and went to the other side, next to the heart...I seen them trying to bring me back with those pads. They put something on those pads like a lubricant, it looked like, and rubbed them together and put them

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on my body, and then it jumped. But I couldn't feel it, even at that time. They brought it back and then hit it again when it went right back out again....[Later] When Dr. B seen me, he told me I had a close call and died and all that stuff. I told him, “Dr. B, I couldn't have died. I knew everything that went on.” I told him when he came up under my right armpit and then changed his mind and went to the other side. He said it was impossible and that I couldn't have possibly seen that, and that I was legally dead at the time. He just shook his head. He just couldn't understand it. And I asked, “Am I right?” He said, “Yes, you're right!” He just shook his head and went walking off....I felt like I was alive. It was just as though I was standing there talking to you. (Case 2)

Sabom commented that the description was in complete agreement with the medical records and with standard medical procedure for such a situation. And, as the account illustrates, the NDEr's observations exactly matched his doctor's memory, much to the doctor's surprise. When Sabom contacted the doctor to verify this report, the doctor stated that he did not remember the specific case, but that several of his patients had given such accounts. An even more impressive case is provided by the following OR NDE of a retired air force pilot who had a cardiac arrest while in the hospital following two heart attacks, reported in 1978, five years after the incident (Sabom 1982, p. 99-102): S: I had the arrest the following morning after the night I had my second heart attack....I think I was sleeping. It was two or three in the morning....There was no feeling in myself that I was even having an arrest. I wouldn't even have known it unless all the people came around. I think I was probably asleep when the thing arrested. The first thing I remember was hearing Code Blue [another term for Code 99] on the intercom and I remember everyone running in... A: Do you remember any of the other details that went on in the room? S: I remember them pulling over the cart, the defibrillator, the thing with the paddles on it. I remember they asked for so many watt-seconds or something on the thing, and they gave me a jolt with it. A: Did you notice any details of the machine itself or the cart it was sitting on? S: I remember it had a meter on the face. I assume it read the voltage, or current, or watt-seconds, or whatever they program the thing for. A: Did you notice how the meter looked?

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S: It was square and had two needles on there, one fixed and one which moved. A: How did it move? S: It seemed to come up rather slowly, really. It didn't just pop up like an ammeter or a voltmeter or something registering. A: And how far up did it go? S: The first time it went between one-third and one-half scale. And then they did it again, and this time it went up over one-half scale, and the third time it was about three-quarters. A: What was the relationship between the moving needle and the fixed needle? S: I think the fixed needle moved each time they punched the thing and somebody was messing with it. And I think they moved the fixed needle and it stayed still while the other one moved up. A: Did the moving needle ever pass the fixed needle? S: I don't think so, but I don't specifically remember. (Case 3)

In his account, the NDEr described the behavior of the meter on the defibrillator that was being used to revive him. Sabom's comment on this description was as follows (Sabom 1982, p. 104): I was particularly fascinated by his description of a “fixed” needle and a “moving” needle on the face of the defibrillator as it was being charged with electricity. The movement of these two needles is not something he could have observed unless he had actually seen this instrument in use....This charging procedure is only performed immediately prior to defibrillation, since once charged, this machine poses a serious electrical hazard unless it is correctly discharged in a very specific manner. Moreover, the meters of the type described by this man are not found on more recent defibrillator models, but were in common use in 1973, at the time of his cardiac arrest.

In order to compare his results with a control group, Sabom (1982) interviewed a group of surgical patients who did not report NDEs, and asked them to describe their ideas as to how resuscitations were conducted. Analysis of these reconstructions revealed at least one major error in each account. This contrasted sharply with the NDE accounts, which contained no errors. Also, the descriptions of the control group lacked the clarity and detail of the

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NDE accounts. It thus appears that these NDErs witnessed operating room events they should never have seen, and this was Sabom's (1982) conclusion. Prior to 1983, there were no reports of childhood NDEs in the medical literature (Morse 1983). If indeed children did not experience NDEs, this result could possibly support a materialist argument that the NDE is a result of socialization, education, and/or religious training—that is, a developmental phenomenon and not the result of an actual experience. Melvin Morse (1983), however, reported a case of the NDE of a seven-year-old girl. Intrigued by this case, Morse, a paediatrician, initiated a research program to study paediatric NDEs (Morse, Conner & Tyler 1985; Morse, Castillo, Venecia et al. 1986; Morse & Perry 1990). The patient sample consisted of 170 children comprising three groups (Morse & Perry 1990): (1) a control group of 121 patients who had been severely, but not critically, ill and had had less than a 5 percent chance of dying; (2) a second control group of 37 patients who had been heavily medicated; and (3) a study group of 12 patients who had been critically ill and near death (such as drowning, cardiac arrest, or coma). Morse and his co-workers (Morse & Perry 1990) found that no patient in either control group experienced an NDE. In contrast, 8 of the 12 patients in the study group had NDEs. Morse concluded that the key variable was being near death, and that a wide range of suggested causes of the NDE could be ruled out, including: the action of anaesthetics, narcotics, and other mindaltering drugs; psychological stress and sensory deprivation associated with the intensive care unit and/or surgery; hypoxia or hypercarbia; the use of an artificial lung machine; and subconscious awareness during surgery. Morse's conclusions echoed those of Sabom (1982). Morse noted that childhood NDEs contain all the elements of adult NDEs except an altered sense of time and the life review, and that such consistency across age argues against the interpretation of the NDE as a Freudian defense mechanism involving the hallucinated survival of death. Morse was struck, as was Sabom, by the accuracy of the visual details provided by the patients in the experimental group (Morse & Perry 1990), and thus ruled out the proposals of conscious or unconscious fabrication of NDEs based on

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medical knowledge. In a television interview (Thomas 1994), Morse showed and described a drawing made by a 7-year-old patient whose NDE occurred when she was 5: ... a young girl, 5 years old, nearly died of bacterial meningitis and was successfully resuscitated at our hospital. Here's her picture of her resuscitation [holds up picture]. Here we have my partner, Dr. Christopher [points to figure in picture]; he has his hands perfectly positioned on her sternum, her breastbone; here is his assistant. Most importantly–and fascinating–is this figure at the foot of the bed, which is wearing a hat. At our hospital, the resuscitation leader wears a hat, so that he or she is immediately visible and identifiable as the team leader in the...confusion of the resuscitation–and here we have it! This clearly is not a detail that she's gleaned from watching too many TV shows....And here she is floating out of her body [points to figure]; here she sees a light that told her who she was and where she was to go...It's absurd to think that a temporal lobe seizure or a spasm of the retinal vessel or irritation of the occipital lobe at the point of death would cause a light that was filled with–let's face it–such higher-order processing of feelings and emotions. (Case 4)

In addition to children, another population of special interest to neardeath researchers is that of the blind. If it were found that the blind did not experience NDEs, materialists might argue that the NDE is merely mental imagery assembled from visual perceptions in one's memory or imagination. On the other hand, NDEs in the blind (especially those blind from birth) would be very strong evidence that the NDE does not depend on the physiology or experience of vision. A similar point has been made concerning outof-body experiences (hereafter called OBEs following Irwin 1987). In the last decade, Ring has taken up the study of NDEs and OBEs in the blind. In a recent book, he and Sharon Cooper (Ring & Cooper 1999) reported the results of their project. They identified 31 people who were congenitally blind (14 participants), adventitiously blind (11), or severely visually impaired (6) and who had experienced either NDEs (16 participants), OBEs (10), or both (5). A total of 10 NDErs were blind from birth. In general, the NDEs of these participants were entirely consistent with the NDEs of sighted people, conforming to the pattern described by Moody

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and verified by Ring, Sabom, and Morse. For example, one congenitally blind participant in Ring's study (Ring & Cooper 1999) lived in a boarding school for the blind in Boston when, at age 8, he became very ill and stopped breathing. He separated from his body, floated to the ceiling, saw his dead body below, and saw his roommate go for help. He then floated up to the roof, where he saw the snowy streets, the trolley cars, and the snowbanks along the streets. He went on to have an extended NDE that was filled with detailed visual perceptions consistent with those of sighted NDErs. Of the 21 NDErs, 15 claimed to have visual perceptions during their NDEs, 3 were unsure, and 3 apparently had no visual experiences. Even these last 3 were difficult to categorize, since they may not have been able to recognize what vision was (Ring & Cooper 1999). All but one of the 10 OBErs claimed to have vision during their OBEs. For the entire sample, 80 percent of the participants claimed to have visual experiences. Of the 14 congenitally blind participants, 9 claimed to have some kind of visual perception during their NDEs or OBEs. Lastly, and more recently, a group of physician researchers in the Netherlands (van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers & Eifferich 2001) replicated many aspects of the research of Sabom (1982) and others. They carried out a prospective and longitudinal study of cardiac arrest patients who had been resuscitated. The authors found that 12 percent of survivors had experienced an NDE. The phenomenology of the NDE as reported by previous researchers was again verified; in addition, the Dutch researchers observed cases of OR NDEs, in which patients visually observed events around their temporarily dead bodies. The authors concluded that physiological and psychological factors do not cause the NDE, yet neurophysiological processes play some role. They suggested that materialistic conceptions of consciousness be reconsidered, and that a non-physical (“transcendental”) process may be at work. As the pioneering work of Moody, Ring, and Sabom demonstrate, and as the more recent research of Morse, Ring and Cooper, and van Lommel et al. accentuate, the NDE is a tremendously robust experience. The NDE is invariant with regard to gender, occupation, educational level, geographical location, social status, race, religious affiliation (or lack thereof), religiosity,

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frequency of church attendance, prior knowledge of the NDE, or type of neardeath crisis event. The NDE occurs in people of all ages, from young children to senior citizens. It occurs to those with sight as well as to those who are blind. The robust nature of the NDE makes a strong argument that the NDE is either an integral part of human nature or an actual experience, rather than a construction on the basis of personal experience, beliefs, or socialization. In addition to this conclusion, the careful medical research of Sabom and Morse allowed them to refute several other materialistic explanations of the NDE, including: the action of endorphins, anaesthetics, narcotics, and other psychotropic drugs; psychological stress or trauma; sensory deprivation associated with the intensive care unit, surgery, or blindness; hypoxia or hypercarbia; the effect of certain medical procedures, such as use of an artificial lung machine; subconscious awareness during surgery; conscious or unconscious fabrication; autoscopic hallucinations; temporal lobe seizures; and Freudian defense mechanisms. In sum, they ruled out all proposed psychological, psychiatric, pharmacological, medical, and physiological theories. In spite of these findings, materialists have continued to propose models of the NDE that involve discredited concepts. For a materialistic theory to be comprehensive in its explanatory power, it must be able to deal with the NDE data summarized above and the conclusion that the NDE is consistent across all demographic variables and types of near-death events. In the face of these requirements, the materialist is necessarily driven to biological arguments based in physiology and genetics (as expressed in brain structure and neural pathways), as these are the only material sources of the common human experience of the NDE. But even with these powerful biological tools, can materialists effectively meet the challenge of the data? Four recent theories of the biological type are summarized below. Then, three arguments are provided that demonstrate the inadequacy of these biological theories (and of materialistic theories in general).

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3.1 Biological Theories of the NDE Susan Blackmore (Blackmore & Troscianko 1989) proposed a physiological model of the NDE tunnel experience based on a hypothetical response of the visual cortex to the dying process: as the brain is denied oxygen, inhibition is suppressed and the visual cortex responds with a hyperactive, random firing of neurons. The firing would be most intense for neurons that represent the center of the visual field, with the effect fading towards the edges. Thus, the subjective impression would be tunnel-like, with a bright spot in the middle and darkness around the edges of the visual field. This effect could have an induction period, during which the bright spot appears to be distant and then moves “toward” the observer. Juan Saavedra-Aguilar and Juan Gomez-Jeria (Saavedra-Aguilar & Gomez-Jeria 1989; Gomez-Jeria & Saavedra-Aguilar 1994) have proposed a physiological model of the NDE that they claim unites the biological and psychological domains: a traumatic event triggers a stress response in the brain, which causes the release of certain neurotransmitters. This, along with the accompanying decrease of oxygen availability in the brain, affects the limbic system, creating abnormal excitation in limbic tissues, eventually leading to temporal lobe dysfunction similar to that found in temporal lobe epilepsy. The features of the NDE are caused by “afterdischarges propagating through limbic connections...towards more distant regions” (Saavedra-Aguilar & GomezJeria 1989, p. 212). His previously quoted statement notwithstanding, Morse and his coworkers (Morse, Castillo, Venecia et al. 1986; Morse, Venecia & Millstein 1989; Morse & Perry 1990) have proposed a physiological/genetic model that bears some similarity to that of Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria. Morse's model proposes that a variety of factors, such as psychological stress, psychoactive drugs, hypoxia/hypercarbia, or direct electrical stimulation, result in disinhibition of the temporal lobe of the cortex. This, in turn, activates a genetic program built into the structure of the temporal lobe, a program that causes the person to experience OBEs and/or NDEs, which are then recorded as memories.

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V. Krishnan (1982, 1993, 1994) has accepted the visual accuracy in reports of what he calls “spontaneous OBEs”, by which he mainly means NDEs. Krishnan has proposed that “OB vision may involve receptors and/or brain mechanisms different from those involved in normal vision” (Krishnan 1982, p. 21), and that OB vision “may represent an attempt to compensate for the reduction of sensory input which may occur during the dying process” (p. 22). Thus, while not denying the accuracy of these visual perceptions, Krishnan maintains that they can be explained physiologically. All of these biological theories have specific flaws that seriously wound them. Blackmore's theory is an example of taking a single NDE feature out of context and explaining that feature away: her model does not deal with any NDE observations occurring either before or after the tunnel experience. The model of Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria completely ignores the medical research of Sabom and Morse regarding causative factors for and phenomenology of the NDE. Similarly, Morse's model ignores the results of his own research regarding causation and phenomenology: he cites causal roles for phenomena that he has already ruled out. Krishnan's argument neglects the fact that for OR NDE cases, the patient's eyes were taped shut or head and body draped with sheets so that any mode of visual sensation would be very hard to identify; Krishnan also does not give a mechanism for eyeless sight. In addition to these specific criticisms, all materialist theories of the NDE are vulnerable to three general arguments based on the data summarized earlier. 3.2 General Arguments Against Materialist Theories of the NDE First, Morse's proposal of a genetically encoded neural program for the NDE (Morse, Venecia & Millstein 1989) leads to the question of whether this explanation is adequate. Such a program would have to contain the NDE and be able to make and integrate into the program the accurate visual observations reported by NDErs (Sabom 1982, 1998; Morse & Perry 1990; van Lommel et al. 2001) in a way that is logical and consistent. This would indeed be a sophisticated program, and on this basis alone one may strongly question the genetic program hypothesis.

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There is, however, an even more fundamental challenge to this concept. According to evolutionary theory, in order for some type of genetic NDE program to have evolved, the early possessors of the NDE program must have gained a survival advantage by virtue of that program. Essentially, members of the population must have come close to death and been saved by the NDE program, which arose through genetic variation or mutation and was passed on to the children of the survivors. It is well-established that the great majority of NDErs find their experience overwhelmingly positive; many are so enthralled with it that they are angry with doctors for reviving them, and they often long to leave this world for many months following their NDEs (Moody 1975; Ring 1980, 1984; Sabom 1982). Some NDErs have reported trying, while out of the body, to prevent medical teams from reviving them (Moody 1975; Ring & Cooper 1999; Sabom 1982). It is therefore contradictory to propose that positive NDEs are a motivation to continue living. It is distinctly not a survival advantage to welcome, enjoy, and prefer death over life. It would thus appear that evolutionary theory, by its own logic, eliminates itself (and therefore genetics) as an explanation of the NDE. Negative NDEs have certainly been reported (Bache 1996; Ellwood 1996; Gibson 1996), and such an experience could conceivably be a motivation to live. But the genetic NDE theorist would (at a minimum) have to explain the existence of two distinctly different programs, and the evolutionary usefulness of the positive one. The materialist may find this argument simplistic or unsophisticated, and suggest that the NDE program arose as a by-product of an adaptive process. It is then incumbent on the materialist to explain how such a by-product could arise, connected with what adaptive evolutionary process, and how the program could be so unique and specific, while also giving other examples of such programs and how they arose. But the materialist has two even more difficult tasks. Second, even if the existence of such genetic programs were somehow explained, our knowledge of human neurophysiology predicts that NDErs should not be able to remember the NDE. This is true whether the NDE is a hallucination or an actual experience. In the case of resuscitations in the OR,

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the patient's heart has stopped and so blood flow to the brain has ceased. This means that the neurons are no longer supplied with oxygen and glucose, both of which are required for neural firing and brain function but not stored in the brain (Powers 1990). Since the brain is a massive consumer of oxygen (Powers 1990), the cessation of blood flow and the resulting anoxia (complete lack of oxygen in the bloodstream) severely inhibit the central nervous system (CNS) chemical reactions necessary for memory and consciousness: “the chief clinical feature of abrupt and global CNS anoxia is immediate loss of consciousness (within seconds), and irreversible damage may begin after only 2-4 minutes” (Morris & Ferrendelli 1990, p. 365-366). Among the first areas of the brain to be affected by anoxia is the hippocampus, which is critical to the formation and storage of long-term memory (Morris & Ferrendelli 1990). Even hypoxia alone is sufficient to cause damage to hippocampal neurons, and memory deficit is a major consequence of this condition (Morris & Ferrendelli 1990). In view of these facts, materialism must predict that NDErs would have no consciousness during or memories of their resuscitations, or hallucinations thereof. Thus, the detailed and accurate information in the long-term memory of Sabom's (1982) and Morse's (Morse & Perry 1990) patients is a direct contradiction of the observations and predictions of modern neurophysiology and is impossible from a materialistic perspective. Third, the most problematic aspect of the NDE for materialists is that of accurate visual perception following physical death. Of the four biological NDE theories discussed above, all except Krishnan's explain these perceptions as hallucinations, whether physiologically or genetically based. A hallucination is defined as a “sense perception for which there is no appropriate external stimulus” (Carson, Butcher & Coleman 1988, p. 8). It is quite clear from the data that the visual observations made by NDErs do not satisfy the definition of a hallucination. The visual observations reported by NDErs in the neighbourhoods of their physical bodies (Sabom 1982; Morse & Perry 1990) are accurate reports of existing external stimuli. Hallucinations are of imagined stimuli and are idiosyncratic to the hallucinator; the NDE is neither.

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Of course, the finding that accurate visual observations by NDErs are not hallucinations leads immediately to the question: how, then, can such observations be made? The answer is that, from the materialistic point of view, they cannot be made. Even Krishnan (1982; 1994), who has bravely accepted the accuracy of these observations, can only point vaguely to supposed alternative visual systems hitherto unknown in the body. This proposal is unworkable on the grounds of neurophysiology as discussed above, and due to the fact that these observations are made from a position outside of the body. It is clearly absurd to propose that the dying (or even living) physical body can somehow “project” its point of view to the ceiling, collect light rays from that physical position, then incorporate this information into body-based perception, consciousness, and memory, all during a time when the brain is oxygenand glucose-deprived. The preceding discussion shows that unless the data are ruled inadmissible a priori, the materialist must struggle with some grave challenges indeed. No materialist theory proposed so far can meet these challenges. It appears that NDE data have exceeded the explanatory limits of materialistic science. In fact, in the cases of physiology and genetics, our knowledge in these areas rules out a materialistic explanation of the NDE. In view of the intersubjective agreement among NDErs and the objective agreement between NDErs and the medical records, the conclusion is that individual consciousness continues to exist after physical death.

4 Conclusion: Consequences of the Data for Consciousness Models The straightforward conclusion from this analysis of the NDE data is that the original boundary condition BC1 is not consistent with the empirical data of subjective experience. Individual consciousness continues after physical death. Accordingly, materialism must be abandoned as the sole dimension along which consciousness is described. Subjective experience therefore earns its independent ontological status, free from any dependence on a living physical body, and must be included as

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a separate dimension for any model or theory of consciousness that is true to the data. Consciousness is indeed a vector. Thus, theories of consciousness must provide for a non-zero C in the case M = 0 (physical death; see Equation 1). In both mathematical physics and the science of consciousness, the empirical data dictate the boundary conditions that any viable theory must satisfy. In the context of mathematical physics, George Arfken (1970) noted that while a transformation of coordinate systems to match a physical system's symmetry facilitates the solution of associated equations, this shift also comes with a price: more complex mathematical expressions and equations to solve. With respect to consciousness, there is also surely a price to pay. The price of the coordinate shift herein described is a required explanation of just how irreducible (non-material) subjective experience interacts with the physical world and combines with material factors to produce consciousness in living humans. This is the famous problem of mind/body interaction (Fodor 1981; Lind 2001), which has been the first (and often last) refuge of materialists in denying dualism any say in the consciousness debate. In terms of mind-body models, the most reasonable fit to the data of subjective experience, including anomalous experiences such as the NDE, is provided by substance dualism (Betty 2004; Mills 1998; Walach & Schmidt 2005), specifically dualistic interactionism, which holds that the mind is not dependent on matter for its existence and survives the physical death of the body, but interacts with the body during life. The NDE data summarized above are entirely consistent with the view that the individual personality originates in a non-material substance that interacts with the body during physical life but separates from the body at the point of death. Interactionism naturally incorporates the view of consciousness as a vector. Addressing the problem of the interaction mechanism is precisely the subject of a series of articles written by the present author (Arnette 1992, 1995, 1999), which demonstrates that a scientific theory of dualistic interactionism is indeed possible. This theory, the theory of essence, holds that the brain interacts with the non-material essence to produce mind in living persons. The interaction is possible because the essence, while composed of a

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substance other than matter, does possess certain properties that might be called “physical”. The manner of interaction is complex, but lies well within the bounds of traditional science once the artificial and unnecessary constraints on the notion of “substance” are relaxed (Arnette 1995, 1999). The theory addresses traditional objections to dualism, while also showing that proposed materialist explanations of the NDE are in fact merely special cases that the theory easily incorporates into a dualistic interactionist paradigm. Unfortunately, reductionist theorists (Britton & Bootzin 2004; Woerlee 2004) continue to cite the untenable explanations of the NDE discussed previously, which are based on phenomena that have either been explained (Arnette 1999) or discredited (Betty 2004; Mills 1998; Walach & Schmidt 2005). In conclusion, the present article has, in effect, traded an insolvable problem (the “hard” problem) for a solvable one (the problem of interaction), the solution to which admits the role of matter but requires the introduction of ontologically independent subjective experience. Thus, to disavow materialism is not to deny science, or even the bulk of materialistic concepts. It is, rather, a dissolution of the boundaries by which science has been limited, and an opportunity to use the tools, methods, and concepts of science in a new way. The same data that served as a foil for materialism light the way in this new exploration. In the flow of this search for truth, we are sure to make exciting new discoveries that are, simultaneously, as old as humanity itself.

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Contributors and Editors J. Kenneth Arnette earned Ph.D. degrees in physical chemistry at Florida State University and in counselling psychology at Colorado State University. He has worked as a research scientist in academia and corporations. In recent years, he has taught psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He currently teaches psychology at Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA. His research interests include consciousness, the mind/body problem, the synthesis of science and spirituality, metaphysics, and philosophical issues in psychology. J. Kenneth Arnette PO Box 121 Spokane, WA 99210-0121 USA Email: [email protected]

Alexander Batthyany earned his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna (2000). He teaches Theory of Science at the University of Vienna and is head of the Scientific Board of the Viennese Viktor Frankl Institute where he is also in charge of the private Frankl archives and edits the 12-volume Collected Works of Viktor Frankl (with Karlheinz Biller and Eugenio Fizzotti). Batthyany’s research focusses on the philosophy of mind and theoretical cognitive science, and the theory of psychology. Alexander Batthyany Dept. of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna 1090 Vienna Austria Email: [email protected]

Hoyt Edge holds the Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Chair of Philosophy at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, USA. His early interest in philosophical psychology resulted in his book, A Constructive Postmodern Perspective on Self and Community: From Atomism to Holism. For the last dozen years, his work has focused on cross-cultural

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psychology and its philosophical implications. His contribution in this collection derives from both of these lines of research. Hoyt L. Edge Dept. of Philosophy Rollins College, 1000 Holt Ave., Box 2749 Winter Park, FL 32789 USA Email: [email protected]

Avshalom Elitzur earned his Ph.D. at the Cohn Institute for the Philosophy of Science and the Department of Physics, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Physicist and philosopher. Refereed publications in quantum mechanics, relativity theory, time's arrow, evolutionary theory, philosophy of mind, psychology of religious experience and suicide prevention. Co-inventor of the Elitzur-Vaidman interaction-free measurement, co-founder of the Center for Frontier Sciences in Temple University, Philadelphia and co-editor of Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics? (Springer, 2005), as well as of other books. Avshalom C. Elitzur Unit of Interdisciplinary Studies Bar-Ilan University Ramat Gan, 52900 Israel Email: [email protected]

Peter J. King was educated at Middlesex Polytechnic and the University of Oxford, and is Lecturer in Philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford. His research interests include metaphysics (in particular time and modality), the philosophy of religion, and ethics. He is the author of One Hundred Philosophers (2004). Peter J. King Philosophy Pembroke College Oxford OX1 1DW United Kingdom Email: [email protected]

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Gershon Kurizki obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Physics (Quantum Optics) from the University of New Mexico. He joined the faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, in 1985. In 1997 he became Professor of Quantum Optics, holder of the G.W. Dunne Chair at the Weizmann Institute. He is currently Topical Editor for Quantum Optics at Optics Letters and the Journal of Physics B. He has so far published 150 papers in scientific journals and edited two science books. His main work is in the fields of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information. His long-standing interest in Spinoza’s philosophy has given rise to his present proposal to reformulate the principles of Spinozicism in quantum mechanical terms. Gershon Kurizki Quantum Optics Group Department of Chemical Physics Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot 76100 Israel Email: [email protected]

Steven Lehar attended schools in Canada, England and Germany where he graduated from Frankfurt International School. After 5 years as a commercial pilot and flight instructor near Boston MA., he got a bachelors degree in computer science from Northeastern University, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University. He is currently an independent researcher at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, in Boston, MA. Steven Lehar Schepens Eye Research Institute 20 Staniford St Boston, MA 02114-2500 USA Email: [email protected]

Peter B. Lloyd graduated in Mathematics in Cardiff University and spent six years there researching in solar engineering, and then six years at Oxford University researching in medical statistics. Throughout this time, he maintained a private interest in philosophy. While working in Oxford, he was able to study philosophy under Dr Michael Lock-

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wood. Since then, he has been working as a freelance software developer, and has selfpublished two books on Berkeley's metaphysics. Peter B. Lloyd PO Box 142 8 Shepherd Market Mayfair London W1J 7JY United Kingdom Email: [email protected]

Paul Løvland has a M.Sc. degree from the Norwegian Technical University, Trondheim (NTH). His professional background is from technical research, development, and engineering. As a freelancer he studied and elaborated relationships between natural science and certain aspects of psychology and of philosophy of action. He presented several papers at International Human Science Research Conferences at universities in Europe and Canada and in the Journal of Indian Psychology (Andhra University Press). He was an invited guest lecturer to Andhra University, India Paul Løvland Bakke S. 51 2040 Kløfta Norway Email: [email protected]

Riccardo Manzotti has a degree in philosophy and a degree in engineering and computer science. He gained his Ph.D in Robotics at the University of Genova, LIRALab, DIST, Department of Computer Science, Robotics, and Bioengineering. Currently, he is assistant professor of psychology at the IULM University (Milan), Institute of Human and Environmental Sciences. He is now working as part of the KTEL (Knowledge & Thinking Engineering Lab). He published a book on consciousness ("Coscienza e realtà", Il Mulino, Bologna, 2001) and several papers on the same topic. He is now focusing on an alternative view of conscious experience which has been labelled “Radical Externalism” at the last Towards A Science of Consciousness Conference (Copenhagen 2005).

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Riccardo Manzotti IULM University of Milan Via Carlo Bo, 8 20143 - Milano Italy Email: [email protected]

Donald P. Merrifield, S.J. received his physics education at the California Institute of Technology (B.S., 1950) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1962) and mainly worked in physics as a consultant at the Jet Propulsion Lab of NASA from 1962 until he became president of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1969. Along with his scientific education, he also received an A.M. in philosophy and S.T.M. in theology for priestly ordination in the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He has published on faith and science and on the spirituality of business, but more recently he has delivered two papers at Towards a Science of Consciousness meetings and is presently Senior Research Fellow in Consciousness at Chaminade University of Honolulu. Donald P. Merrifield, S.J. Jesuit House 2727 Pamoa Road, Honolulu, HI 96822-1838 USA Email: [email protected]

Russell Pannier has an M.A. in Philosophy from Harvard University and a J.D. in Law from the University of Minnesota. He has published in the areas of logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, medieval philosophy, jurisprudence, and constitutional law. Russell Pannier William Mitchell College of Law 875 Summit Avenue St. Paul, MN 55105-3076 USA Email: [email protected]

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Howard Robinson was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Oxford University, and has taught at Oxford, Liverpool, ELTE and Central European University in Budapest, where he is now professor of philosophy. His monographs are Matter and Sense (Cambridge 1982) and Perception (Routledge 1994) and he is currently completing a book on externalism. He has edited collections on physicalism, on Berkeley, and on ancient philosophy. He has also published various articles in these areas. Howard Robinson Philosophy Ph.D. Program Central European University Nádor Utca 9 1051 Budapest Hungary Email: [email protected]

Fiona Steinkamp gained her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Dundee in 1992 and has worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh since 1995. Her research interests focus on Parapsychology and on German Idealism. She has published in both Parapsychology and Philosophy, and was editor of Parapsychology, Philosophy, and the Mind (McFarland & Co) and has provided the first English translation of Schelling's Clara, or Nature's Connection to the Spirit World (SUNY Press). Fiona Steinkamp Dept of Psychology The University of Edinburgh 7 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9JZ United Kingdom Email: [email protected]

Thomas D. Sullivan gained his Ph.D. in Philosophy at St. John’s University in New York. He did a year’s postdoctoral work as Senior Research Fellow at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently holder of the Aquinas Chair at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, he has published in the areas of logic, ethics, metaphysics, medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. Sullivan has collaborated with Russell Pannier on about half a dozen articles.

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Thomas D. Sullivan Department of Philosophy University of St. Thomas 2115 Summit Avenue St. Paul, MN 55105 USA Email: [email protected]

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